Feb. 29, 2024

Schwab Fundamental Emerging Markets Large Company Index ETF

Investment Objective

The fund’s goal is to track as closely as possible, before fees and expenses, the total return of an index that measures the performance of large sized companies, based on their fundamental size and weight, in emerging market countries.

Fund Fees and Expenses

This table describes the fees and expenses you may pay if you buy, hold and sell shares of the fund. You may pay other fees, such as brokerage commissions and other fees to financial intermediaries, which are not reflected in the table and Example below.

Shareholder Fees (fees paid directly from your investment)

Shareholder Fees (fees paid directly from your investment)
​	None

Annual Fund Operating Expenses (expenses that you pay each year as a % of the value of your investment)

Annual Fund Operating Expenses (expenses that you pay each year as a % of the value of your investment)
Management fees	0.39
Other expenses	None
Total annual fund operating expenses	0.39

Example

This example is intended to help you compare the cost of investing in the fund with the cost of investing in other funds. The example assumes that you invest $10,000 in the fund for the time periods indicated and then sell all of your shares at the end of those time periods. The example also assumes that your investment has a 5% return each year and that the fund’s operating expenses remain the same. Your actual costs may be higher or lower.

Expenses on a $10,000 Investment

Expenses on a $10,000 Investment
1 Year			3 Years			5 Years			10 Years
​	$	40	​	$	125	​	$	219	​	$	493

Portfolio Turnover

The fund pays transaction costs, such as commissions, when it buys and sells securities (or “turns over” its portfolio). A higher portfolio turnover may indicate higher transaction costs and may result in higher taxes when fund shares are held in a taxable account. These costs, which are not reflected in the annual fund operating expenses or in the example, affect the fund’s performance. During the most recent fiscal year, the fund’s portfolio turnover rate was 16% of the average value of its portfolio.

Principal Investment Strategies

To pursue its goal, the fund generally invests in stocks that are included in the RAFI Fundamental High Liquidity Emerging Markets Index†. The index selects, ranks, and weights securities by fundamental measures of company size – adjusted sales, retained operating cash flow, and dividends plus buybacks – rather than market capitalization. The index measures the performance of the large company size segment by fundamental overall company scores (scores), which are created using as the universe the emerging markets companies in the RAFI Global Equity Investable Universe (the parent universe). Securities are grouped in order of decreasing score and each company receives a weight based on its percentage of the total scores of the emerging markets companies within the parent universe. The index is comprised of the largest emerging markets companies by fundamental size. The top 87.5% of the companies by cumulative fundamental score are included in the index. The companies included in the index, and their respective weights, are determined annually and are implemented using a partial quarterly reconstitution methodology in which the index is split into four equal segments and each segment is rebalanced on a rolling quarterly basis. The method of calculating the components of the index is subject to change.

It is the fund’s policy that, under normal circumstances, it will invest at least 80% of its net assets (including, for this purpose, any borrowings for investment purposes) in stocks included in the index, including depositary receipts representing securities of the index; which may be in the form of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) and European Depositary Receipts (EDRs). The fund will notify its shareholders at least 60 days before changing this policy. The fund may sell securities that are represented in the index in anticipation of their removal from the index, or buy securities that are not yet represented in the index in anticipation of their addition to the index. The fund does not hedge its exposure to foreign currencies. However, the fund may use forward contracts to lock in exchange rates for the portfolio securities purchased or sold, but awaiting settlement. These transactions establish a rate of exchange that can be expected to be received upon settlement of the securities.

Under normal circumstances, the fund may invest up to 20% of its net assets in securities not included in the index. The principal types of these investments include, but are not limited to, those that the investment adviser believes will help the fund track the index, such as

†

Index ownership — The RAFI Fundamental High Liquidity Emerging Markets Index (the Index) is a service mark of RAFI Indices, LLC or its affiliates (collectively, RAFI) and has been licensed for use by Charles Schwab Investment Management, Inc. The intellectual and other property rights to the Index are owned by or licensed to RAFI. The Schwab Fundamental Emerging Markets Equity ETF is not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by RAFI, its agents or service providers (collectively, the RAFI Parties). The RAFI Parties: (i) make no representation or warranty as to the results to be obtained from the use of the Index or otherwise; and (ii) shall not be liable (whether in negligence or otherwise) to any person for any error in the Index. For full disclaimer, please see the fund’s statement of additional information.

investments in (a) securities that are not represented in the index but the investment adviser anticipates will be added to the index or as necessary to reflect various corporate actions (such as mergers and spin-offs), (b) other investment companies, and (c) derivatives, principally futures contracts. The fund may use futures contracts and other derivatives primarily to (a) seek returns on the fund’s otherwise uninvested cash assets to help it better track the index and (b) obtain exposure substantially similar to that provided by certain securities included in the index which the fund may not be able to purchase or hold directly due to restrictions and/or regulations on investments in the applicable local markets. The fund may also invest in cash and cash equivalents, including money market funds, and may lend its securities to minimize the difference in performance that naturally exists between an index fund and its corresponding index.

Because it may not be possible or practicable to purchase all of the stocks in the index, the investment adviser seeks to track the total return of the index by using sampling techniques. Sampling techniques involve investing in a limited number of index securities which, when taken together, are expected to perform similarly to the index as a whole. These techniques are based on a variety of factors, including performance attributes, tax considerations, capitalization, dividend yield, price/earnings ratio, industry factors, risk factors and other characteristics. The fund generally expects that its portfolio will hold less than the total number of securities in the index, but reserves the right to hold as many securities as it believes necessary to achieve the fund’s investment objective. The fund generally expects that its portfolio characteristics will be similar to those of the index.

The investment adviser seeks to achieve, over time, a correlation between the fund’s performance and that of the index, before fees and expenses, of 95% or better. However, there can be no guarantee that the fund will achieve a high degree of correlation with the index. A number of factors may affect the fund’s ability to achieve a high correlation with the index, including the number of index securities held by the fund as part of the sampling techniques. The correlation between the performance of the fund and the index may also diverge due to transaction costs, asset valuations, corporate actions (such as mergers and spin-offs), timing variances, and differences between the fund’s portfolio and the index resulting from legal restrictions (such as diversification requirements) that apply to the fund but not to the index.

The fund will concentrate its investments (i.e., hold more than 25% of its total assets) in particular industry, group of industries or sector to approximately the same extent that the index is so concentrated.

Performance

The bar chart below shows how the fund’s investment results have varied from year to year, and the following table shows how the fund’s average annual total returns for various periods compared to those of one or more indices. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index serves as the fund’s regulatory index and provides a broad measure of market performance. The fund generally invests in securities that are included in the RAFI Fundamental High Liquidity Emerging Markets Index. The fund does not seek to track the regulatory index. This information provides some indication of the risks of investing in the fund. All figures assume distributions were reinvested. Keep in mind that future performance (both before and after taxes) may differ from past performance. For current performance information, please see
www.schwabassetmanagement.com/schwabetfs_prospectus.

Annual Total Returns (%) as of 12/31

Best Quarter: 22.15% Q4 2020

Worst Quarter: (30.27%) Q1 2020

Year-to-date performance (before taxes) as of 3/31/24: 2.32%

Average Annual Total Returns as of 12/31/23

Average Annual Total Returns as of 12/31/23
​	1 Year		5 Years		10 Years
Before taxes	​	14.88%	​	5.27%	​	3.40%
After taxes on distributions	​	13.62%	​	4.36%	​	2.79%
After taxes on distributions and sale of shares	​	9.70%	​	4.15%	​	2.72%
Comparative Indices (reflects no deduction for fees, expenses, or taxes)	​	​	​	​	​	​
MSCI Emerging Markets Index (Net)(1)(2)	​	9.83%	​	3.69%	​	2.66%
RAFI Fundamental High Liquidity Emerging Markets Index (Net)(1)(3)	​	—	​	—	​	—
Russell RAFI Emerging Markets Large Company Index (Net)(1)	​	15.90%	​	5.59%	​	3.86%
Fundamental Emerging Markets Spliced Index(1)(4)	​	15.90%	​	5.59%	​	3.86%

(1)

The net version of the index reflects reinvested dividends net of withholding taxes, but reflects no deductions for expenses or other taxes.​

(2)

In anticipation of new regulatory requirements, the fund’s regulatory index has changed from the Russell RAFI Emerging Markets Large Company Index (Net) to the MSCI Emerging Markets Index (Net).

(3)

Effective June 21, 2024, the fund changed its comparative index from the Russell RAFI Emerging Markets Large Company Index (Net) to the RAFI Fundamental High Liquidity Emerging Markets Index (Net) in connection with a change to the fund’s investment objective and investment strategy to invest its assets in accordance with the index. The index has not been in operation for a full calendar year, and therefore has no performance data to present. Performance of the fund prior to June 21, 2024, is based on the fund’s investment strategy to track the previous index.

(4)

The Fundamental Emerging Markets Spliced Index is an internally calculated index comprised of the Russell RAFI Emerging Markets Large Company Index (Net) from the inception of the fund until the close of business on June 21, 2024, and the RAFI Fundamental High Liquidity Emerging Markets Index (Net) from June 22, 2024 forward.

The after-tax figures reflect the highest individual federal income tax rates in effect during the period and do not reflect the impact of state and local taxes. Your actual after-tax returns depend on your individual tax situation. In addition, after-tax returns are not relevant if you hold your fund shares through a tax-deferred arrangement, such as a 401(k) plan, an individual retirement account (IRA) or other tax-advantaged account.