AdvisorShares Rolls Out an Active South Korea Growth ETF

AdvisorShares has partnered up with Korea Investment Management Co. to launch an actively managed South Korea exchange traded fund focused on growth-oriented companies.

The recently launched AdvisorShares Kim Korea Equity ETF (NYSEArca: KOR) is sub-advised by Korea Investment Management Co., South Korea’s largest independent asset manager with an established equity investment approach. KOR has a 0.99% net expense ratio.

“Korea Investment Management delivers a well-established record with an institutional pedigree of an unparalleled expertise of the Korean equity market,” Noah Hamman, chief executive officer of AdvisorShares, said in a pres release. “Not only can advisors and investors now access the Korean equity market through the country’s leading asset manager, they can do so with the full-transparency, intraday liquidity and the enhanced overall efficiencies of an ETF structure.”

KOR will managed by Young-seok Lee, Sang-min Lee, Jun-il Han, Hyo-Chan Kim, Hyun-mi Kim and Tae-hoon Kim.

“Our steadfast investment approach has been long-committed to bringing sustained success and outperformance to our institutional client base,” Hong-Rae Cho, chief executive officer of Korea Investment Management, said in a press release. “Our portfolio management team investments in companies and industries with favorable prospects thus capturing new dynamism of companies with new business models, new technologies and new markets, which provides an opportunity to deliver returns in excess of our benchmark to KOR shareholders.”

Specifically, KOR’s management team will deviate from its MSCI Korea benchmark to invest in growth-oriented companies and industries with favorable prospects while avoiding those with a negative outlook.

The managers will screen for factors like annual sales growth with sustained profit margins, annual earnings per share growth and anticipated sales or earnings per share growth. KOR’s strategy will target a mid- to long-term outlook and avoid short-term trades, focusing on fundamentals rather than short-term momentum.

As of September 29, top holdings include Samsung Electronics 15.2%, Lotte Chemical Corp 2.5%, Naver Corp 2.5%, KB Insurance Co. 2.5% and Hyundai Motor 2.5%.

For more information on new fund products, visit our new ETFs category.

This article was provided by our partners at ETFTrends.