Description

This passively managed exchange-traded fund provides exposure to approximately 60 large and mid-capitalization Canadian companies, specifically those anticipated to sustain and increase their dividend payments. Employing a smart beta approach, the fund follows a unique, rules-based index designed to capture specific strategic investment factors. Its selection process begins with the 300 largest Canadian stocks. From this universe, companies are further filtered using a comprehensive factor score, which is a weighted average primarily driven by dividend yield (70%), alongside payout ratio (15%) and dividend growth (15%). To neutralize any size-related bias, this composite score is then combined with a size factor. Within each sector, individual securities are chosen based on their size-adjusted composite score. Subsequently, the fund strategically overweights groups exhibiting higher dividend yields while under-weighting those with lower yields. The index undergoes annual rebalancing, conducted on the third Friday of February.