Yahoo Finance Should You Invest in the iShares U.S. Healthcare Providers ETF (IHF)?
Looking for broad exposure to the Healthcare - Healthcare - Providers segment of the equity market? You should consider the iShares U.S. Healthcare Providers ETF (IHF), a passively managed exchange traded fund launched on 05/01/2006.
An increasingly popular option among retail and institutional investors, passively managed ETFs offer low costs, transparency, flexibility, and tax efficiency; they are also excellent vehicles for long term investors.
Investor-friendly, sector ETFs provide many options to gain low risk and diversified exposure to a broad group of companies in particular sectors. Healthcare - Healthcare - Providers is one of the 16 broad Zacks sectors within the Zacks Industry classification. It is currently ranked 8, placing it in top 50%.
Index Details
The fund is sponsored by Blackrock. It has amassed assets over $766.35 million, making it one of the larger ETFs attempting to match the performance of the Healthcare - Healthcare - Providers segment of the equity market. IHF seeks to match the performance of the Dow Jones U.S. Select HealthCare Providers Index before fees and expenses.
The Dow Jones U.S. Select HealthCare Providers Index is free-float adjusted market capitalization-weighted index. It measures the performance of the health care providers sub-sector of the U.S. equity market. It includes health maintenance organizations, hospitals, clinics, dentists, opticians, nursing homes rehabilitation & retirement centres.
Costs
Since cheaper funds tend to produce better results than more expensive funds, assuming all other factors remain equal, it is important for investors to pay attention to an ETF's expense ratio.
Annual operating expenses for this ETF are 0.40%, making it one of the cheaper products in the space.
It has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 0.80%.
Sector Exposure and Top Holdings
Even though ETFs offer diversified exposure which minimizes single stock risk, it is still important to look into a fund's holdings before investing. Luckily, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.
This ETF has heaviest allocation in the Healthcare sector--about 100% of the portfolio.
Looking at individual holdings, Unitedhealth Group Inc (UNH) accounts for about 22.89% of total assets, followed by Elevance Health Inc (ELV) and Cigna (CI).
The top 10 holdings account for about 74.70% of total assets under management.
Performance and Risk
The ETF return is roughly 0.51% and was up about 8.50% so far this year and in the past one year (as of 06/03/2024), respectively. IHF has traded between $48.68 and $54.54 during this last 52-week period.
The ETF has a beta of 0.73 and standard deviation of 17.33% for the trailing three-year period, making it a medium risk choice in the space. With about 71 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk.
Alternatives
IShares U.S. Healthcare Providers ETF holds a Zacks ETF Rank of 1 (Strong Buy), which is based on expected asset class return, expense ratio, and momentum, among other factors. Because of this, IHF is a great option for investors seeking exposure to the Health Care ETFs segment of the market. There are other additional ETFs in the space that investors could consider as well.
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iShares U.S. Healthcare Providers ETF (IHF): ETF Research Reports
UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (UNH) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Cigna Group (CI) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Elevance Health, Inc. (ELV) : Free Stock Analysis Report
