Canadian fund manager Harvest Portfolios has unveiled a thematic ETF providing exposure to companies linked to the global space industry.
Harvest Portfolios has launched a space innovation ETF on TSX providing exposure to companies involved in 21st-century space activities.
The Harvest Space Innovation Index ETF has listed on Toronto Stock Exchange and comes with a management fee of 0.50%.
The fund is available to trade through a currency-hedged Canadian dollar share class (Ticker: ORBT CN) as well as through a non-hedged US dollar share class (ORBT.U CN).
Michael Kovacs, President and CEO of Harvest Portfolios, said: “ORBT is another unique index ETF by Harvest and will provide Canadian investors with access to some of the most prominent space innovation companies in the world.
“ORBT provides a portfolio that stands to benefit from the burgeoning growth and development in the field of space innovation, exploration, tourism, and infrastructure.”
Methodology
The ETF is linked to the Solactive Space Innovation Index which is derived from a universe of developed market stocks with market capitalizations above $100 million and average daily trading volume greater than $1m.
Security selection is driven by ARTIS, index provider Solactive’s proprietary natural language processing algorithm. ARTIS identifies firms linked to a specific theme by screening for related keywords in a company’s publicly available documents.
With reference to the space theme, the methodology identifies companies with business operations related to satellites, space probes, space launches, space flight, space tourism, space stations, and space habitats.
The index selects and equally weights the 40 stocks with the greatest relevance to the space theme. Rebalancing occurs on a quarterly basis with buffer rules helping to limit unnecessary turnover.
Stocks from the US account for over two-thirds (69%) of the index weight followed by companies listed in France (11%), Japan (8%), and Italy (5%). In terms of industry exposure, the index is primarily exposed to space equipment & services (44%) with lesser allocations to satellite imaging (24%), satellite communication (19%), and space tourism (13%).
The fund is the second space-related ETF in Canada following the actively managed Emerge ARK Space Exploration ETF (EAXP CN) which launched at the end of last month. Sub-advised by US-based ARK Investment Management, EAXP has an expected management expense ratio of 1.15%.