iShares ESG MSCI USA Leaders ETF | SUSL

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|04/03/2025

by Lan Anh Tran
IShares ESG MSCI USA Leaders ETF keeps up with the broader market while emphasizing leaders in environmental, social, and governance practices.

The fund tracks the MSCI USA Extended ESG Leaders Index, which targets large- and mid-cap companies with strong ESG practices. The index ranks each company against its sector peers on the ESG risks they face and how well they manage them. The index starts with the highest-ranking firm in each sector and goes down the list until it captures 50% of each sector's total market capitalization. This approach avoids sector tilts as it recognizes some sectors carry more ESG risk than others and doesn't weed out entire industries with higher risk. The fund keeps out ESG laggards but ensures its sector composition stays in line with that of the broader stock market.

The index weights eligible constituents by their market capitalization. This efficiently sizes its positions according to the market's collective opinion of each stock's value. The resulting portfolio carries the same sector and factor exposure as its average large-blend Morningstar Category peer and the category index.

The fund’s return patterns largely follow its category average, but some ESG-driven stock bets can drive short-term returns in unexpected directions. The fund excludes many stocks as it only sweeps in the top-scoring half of each sector. Some of these exclusions are industry giants that claim significant weights in a typical peer's portfolio. Three of the "Magnificent Seven" stocks are noticeably absent: Apple, Amazon.com, and Meta Platforms. This can lead to significant concentration in the fund's top holdings. For example, Nvidia and Microsoft each claim around 10% of the fund's assets.

Nonetheless, the fund's broad portfolio and low 0.10% annual fee should provide a durable advantage versus category peers. It has outperformed the category average by over 2 percentage points annualized between its 2019 inception and January 2025.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™A broad-market portfolio for socially conscious investors.
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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