Horizons Active Intl Developed Markets Equity ETF invests in developed market stocks outside of North America

Toronto-based Horizons ETFs Management (Canada) Inc. on Wednesday announced the launch of Horizons Active Intl Developed Markets Equity ETF.

The funds provides active, low-cost, dividend-focused exposure to developed stock markets outside of North America, Horizons says in its announcement.

Units of the fund began trading Wednesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HADM.

The actively managed ETF seeks to provide long-term returns consisting of regular dividend income and modest long-term capital growth by investing in high-quality, dividend-paying companies across international developed markets outside of North America, including countries in Europe, Australasia and the Far East. It may hedge some or all of its non-Canadian dollar currency exposure back to the Canadian dollar.

Subadvised by the systematic equities group from Toronto-based Guardian Capital LP, the fund uses Guardian Capital’s proprietary GPS stock selection process, which targets dividend stocks that offer a combination of dividend growth, payout and sustainability to build a diversified portfolio that seeks to generate an attractive total return within the developed international equity universe.

Guardian Capital’s Srikanth Iyer, managing director, head of systematic strategies, and Fiona Wilson, portfolio manager, will take on lead portfolio management responsibilities for the fund.

“Developed markets outside of North America have an incredibly vast amount of issuers, so it’s tough for investors to develop a focused yield strategy on their own,” says Iyer, in a statement. “We believe that the combination of discretionary management and quantitative screens that HADM leverages will help investors reach the full yield potential of these large international developed markets.”

“So far in 2017, international developed market equity exposed ETFs have had four times the amount of inflows as domestic equity ETFs — with most of these inflows in passive index tracking ETFs,” says Steve Hawkins, president and co-CEO of Horizons ETFs. “Now that Canadians are so aggressively investing outside of Canada using ETFs, we felt it was very important to give them access to an active ETF strategy, focusing on dividend stocks in the Europe, Australasia and Far East regions.”