iShares ESG U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF | EAGG

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|04/04/2024

by Zachary Evens
IShares ESG US Aggregate Bond ETF EAGG effectively captures the taxable, US investment-grade bond market while favoring issuers possessing strong environmental, social, and governance traits.

The fund tracks the Bloomberg MSCI US Aggregate ESG Focus Index. The index applies screens that favor issuers with positive ESG characteristics while minimizing tracking error to the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index. The parent index includes taxable, investment-grade US bonds with at least one year until maturity. Issuing activity in that market, which is dominated by US Treasuries, will dictate the portfolio's composition. Market-value weighting emphasizes the most liquid issues by harnessing the market's collective wisdom on the relative value of each bond.

The US investment-grade bond market is highly efficient and liquid, giving this fund an edge on pricier active strategies that must take greater risk to recoup their fees. Active managers allocate a higher percentage of assets to lower-quality bonds than this fund. Performance of those credit-risky bonds helps steer peer-relative performance. About 75% of the fund's assets carry an AA or AAA credit rating, 9 percentage points greater than the Morningstar Category average and the same as its non-ESG sibling, iShares Core US Aggregate Bond ETF AGG, as of March 2024. Some peers also hold a small allocation to high-yield bonds; this fund does not.

Since credit risk is muted, interest-rate risk primarily drives this fund’s performance. Its average effective duration was 6.1 years as of March 2024. While the gap has narrowed recently, its duration remains slightly longer than the category average and the same as AGG. This makes the fund more sensitive to interest-rate movements than some peers.

Since the fund's 2018 inception, it beat its average peer by 16 basis points annualized largely thanks to its 0.10% fee. Performance patterns have been predictable in different market environments and a mirror image of AGG. Thanks to minimal credit risk, the fund performs better than peers when credit spreads widen but worse when they narrow. Fund performance may be more volatile than peers when interest rates fluctuate because of its slightly longer duration. However, the gap is small, meaning those deviations should be kept to a minimum.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™US investment-grade bond coverage with an ESG twist.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PessoasAbove Average
ParentAbove Average
ProcessoAbove Average
 
Morningstar Medalist RatingMorningstar assigns the Medalist Rating to funds that are qualitatively and quantitatively assessed through manager research and algorithmic processes. The assessment turns on three key “pillars” – People, Process, and Parent – that yield an estimate of how well a fund will perform before fees but after adjusting for risk.
A fim de prover consistência para todos os relatórios fornecidos por diferentes Asset Managers, os data points calculados apresentados são gerados usando uma metodologia de cálculo proprietária da Morningstar, que pode ser conferida com mais detalhes em(https://www.morningstar.com/research/signature)
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