It has been many years in the making, but T. Rowe Price today officially became a member of the exchange-traded fund community with the launch of four actively managed equity products. The funds will utilize the same investment strategies and portfolio managers as their corresponding mutual funds, but they possess the usual ETF attributes that include intra-day trading and lower expense ratios.
These products are part of the small but growing niche of actively managed ETFs from big-name asset managers that offer so-called semi-transparent portfolios that don’t have to disclose their holdings on a daily basis.
T. Rowe Price’s structure uses a proxy comprising a basket of securities and cash that’s designed to closely track the daily performance of a particular fund’s portfolio. In addition to the proxy portfolio, each business day before the start of trading the fund will publish the portfolio overlap, tracking error and the deviation between the proxy and the fund’s net asset value on a daily and rolling one-year basis. The company’s ETFs will disclose their full portfolios quarterly, with a 15-day lag.
The four funds, which trade on the NYSE Arca exchange, comprise the following:
• T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth ETF (TCHP) — invests in large- and mid-cap companies thought to have potential for above-average earnings growth. The fund is managed by Larry Puglia, who has managed the T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth Fund since 1993. This ETF’s expense ratio is 0.57%, or 12 basis points less than its corresponding mutual fund.
• T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth ETF (TDVG) — focuses on dividend-paying companies expected to increase their dividends over time. It’s managed by Thomas Huber, the portfolio manager of the T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth Fund since 2000. The ETF charges a fee of 0.50% versus 0.62% for the mutual fund.
• T. Rowe Price Equity Income ETF (TEQI) — this fund’s mandate is to invest in large-cap companies with a strong track record of paying dividends or that are believed to be undervalued. Fund manager John Linehan, former head of the company’s U.S. equity division, has managed the T. Rowe Price Equity Income Fund since 2015. The expense ratio of 0.54% compares to 0.64% for the corresponding mutual fund.
• T. Rowe Price Growth Stock ETF (TGRW) — contains companies with one or more of the following attributes: superior growth in earnings and cash flow; ability to sustain earnings momentum even during economic slowdowns; occupation of a lucrative niche in the economy; and ability to expand even during times of slow economic growth. Portfolio manager Joseph Fath has been at the helm of the T. Rowe Price Growth Stock Fund for six years. This product’s fee is 0.52%; the similar mutual fund charges 0.65%.
In a prior interview, Tim Coyne, head of ETFs at T. Rowe Price, said the company doesn’t fear these new ETFs will cannibalize its existing mutual funds because different types of investment accounts work best with certain products. For example, he noted, tax-efficient ETFs are a good fit in taxable accounts, while mutual funds make sense in nontaxable retirement accounts.
Coyne also said T. Rowe Price plans to expand its ETF suite, which he believes will take its investment strategies to a wider audience.
T. Rowe Price initially approached the Securities and Exchange Commission 10 years ago about launching semi-transparent ETFs, and three years later it filed its first request for exemptive relief from certain provisions of the Investment Company Act of 1940 and SEC rules that ETFs need in order to be approved. After various refilings, the SEC finally granted exemptive relief for T. Rowe Price’s ETF structure last December.