XML 118 R69.htm IDEA: XBRL DOCUMENT v3.20.4
Jan. 04, 2021
First Trust Multi-Manager Large Growth ETF
Summary Information
<span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.90pt;font-weight:bold;margin-left:0%;">Investment Objective</span>
The First Trust Multi-Manager Large Growth ETF (the "Fund") seeks to provide long-term capital appreciation.
<span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.90pt;font-weight:bold;margin-left:0%;">Fees and Expenses of the Fund</span>
The following table describes the fees and expenses you may pay if you buy, hold and sell shares of the Fund. Investors may pay other fees, such as brokerage commissions and other fees to financial intermediaries, which are not reflected in the table and example below.
<span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.00pt;font-weight:bold;margin-left:0%;">Shareholder Fees</span><span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.00pt;">(fees paid directly from your investment)</span>
<span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.00pt;font-weight:bold;margin-left:0%;">Annual Fund Operating Expenses</span><span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.00pt;">(expenses that you pay each year as a percentage of the value of your investment)</span>
<span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.00pt;font-style:italic;font-weight:bold;margin-left:0%;">Example</span>
The example below is intended to help you compare the cost of investing in the Fund with the cost of investing in other funds. This example does not take into account customary brokerage commissions that you pay when purchasing or selling shares of the Fund in the secondary market.The example assumes that you invest $10,000 in the Fund for the time periods indicated. The example also assumes that your investment has a 5% return each year and that the Fund’s operating expenses remain at current levels. Although your actual costs may be higher or lower, based on these assumptions your costs would be:
<span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.90pt;font-weight:bold;margin-left:0%;">Portfolio Turnover</span>
The Fund pays transaction costs, such as commissions, when it buys and sells securities (or “turns over” its portfolio). A higher portfolio turnover rate 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 annual fund operating expenses or in the example, affect the Fund’s performance. During the fiscal period July 21, 2020 (inception) through August 31, 2020, the Fund’s portfolio turnover rate was 2% of the average value of its portfolio.
<span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.90pt;font-weight:bold;margin-left:0%;">Principal Investment Strategies</span>
Under normal market conditions, the Fund invests at least 80% of its net assets (including investment borrowings) in equity securities issued by large capitalization companies. The Fund considers large capitalization companies to be those companies with market capitalizations within the market capitalization range of the companies comprising the Russell 1000 Growth Index (as of the index’s most recent reconstitution). The Fund’s portfolio is principally composed of common stocks issued by companies domiciled in the United States, common stocks issued by non-U.S. companies that are principally traded in the United States and American Depositary Receipts.The Fund utilizes a multi-manager approach to provide exposure to the large capitalization growth segment of the equity market through the blending of multiple portfolio management teams. This multi-manager approach seeks to provide investors with diversified expertise from leading asset management firms that each utilizes its own experience, philosophy and strategy for investing in the large capitalization growth segment of the equity market. The Fund’s investment advisor, First Trust Advisors L.P. (“First Trust” or the “Advisor”), is responsible for selecting and overseeing these investment sub-advisors (each, a “Sub-Advisor”). In selecting the Sub-Advisors, First Trust undertakes rigorous due diligence with the aim of identifying high quality managers with investment strategies that emphasize a long-term outlook and have a consistent track record of success over multiple time periods. Each Sub-Advisor selected by First Trust is responsible for providing recommendations to First Trust regarding the selection and allocation of the securities in its allocated portion of the Fund’s assets.First Trust has selected Wellington Management Company LLP (“Wellington”) and Sands Capital Management, LLC (“Sands Capital”) to each serve as a Sub-Advisor to the Fund and has equally allocated the Fund’s assets between them. The Sub-Advisor allocations will drift over time due to market conditions and security selection, and First Trust will seek to rebalance the Sub-Advisors back to equal-weight should one Sub-Advisor generally account for more than 60% of the total net assets for a period of time. Given the complementary investment styles of each Sub-Advisor, the rebalance is designed to maintain meaningful investment exposure to each Sub-Advisor over time to achieve the stated investment objective. First Trust may also recommend to the Board of Trustees of the Trust (the “Board”) additional Sub-Advisors, replacement Sub-Advisors or changes in the allocation of the Fund’s assets among the Sub-Advisors.The starting universe of securities for each Sub-Advisor generally will consist of the constituent securities of the Russell 1000 Growth Index. Wellington recommends securities to First Trust with respect to its allocated portion of the Fund’s assets pursuant to Wellington’s investment philosophy that improvement in the quality of company fundamentals is often a powerful and persistent signal for long-term returns. Wellington generally focuses on a lower beta profile compared to typical growth portfolios, which Wellington believes has the potential to offer downside protection in periods of volatility. Utilizing a fundamental research framework, Wellington seeks to identify companies with improving quality and attractive fundamentals that are undervalued as a result of investors’ tendency to underappreciate the long-term potential of improving quality trends. As part of its fundamental research framework, Wellington generally evaluates companies using three primary factors: (1) quality, including but not limited to evaluation of capital structure, return on assets, return on equity and capital allocation; (2) valuation, including but not limited to earnings ratios and cash flow ratios; and (3) momentum, including but not limited to trajectory of revenue and earnings revisions. Through detailed bottom-up analysis, Wellington makes recommendations to First Trust for Wellington’s portion of the Fund’s portfolio based on company meetings, management quality and track record and identifying key drivers of business performance.Sands Capital recommends securities to First Trust with respect to its allocated portion of the Fund’s assets pursuant to its investment focus on a growth-oriented investment philosophy that is rooted in the belief that, over time, common stock prices will reflect the earnings power and growth of the underlying business. Sands Capital employs a research focused strategy that seeks to identify high-quality, wealth-creating growth businesses using a fundamental, business-focused research approach. As part of the fundamental research, Sands Capital will utilize quantitative and qualitative research to analyze six key factors to narrow the investable universe: (1) sustainable above-average earnings growth; (2) leadership position in a promising business space; (3) significant competitive advantages in a particular segment of the market; (4) clear mission and value-added focus; (5) financial strength; and (6) rational valuation relative to the market and business prospects. Through the fundamental financial research, Sands Capital will review each company’s valuation on an absolute basis, as well as relative to the overall market, its competitors, and its own business and growth prospects. Sands Capital will utilize both publicly available market data and internal projections from its proprietary earnings models, which incorporate quantitative metrics including but not limited to price-to earnings ratio, price-to-cash flow ratio and, where appropriate, price-to-sales ratio, price-to-book ratio and/or enterprise-value-to-EBITDA ratio.Sands Capital manages its allocated assets through a conviction-based weighting, generally allowing higher-conviction holdings to rise in weight through appreciation, or by allocating more weight through purchases to increase them, while maintaining smaller weights for those holdings with lower relative conviction. Conviction in a company’s strength is based on the fundamental review of the six key factors described above, duration and sustainability of growth, and the relative attractiveness of valuation. Strategically, Sands Capital’s allocated portion of the Fund’s portfolio is a conviction-weighted rank of businesses that are generally classified into in three categories: small weights (0-2.5 percent); medium weights (2.5-5.0 percent); and large weights (5.0 percent or greater).The Fund is classified as “non-diversified” under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the “1940 Act”).
<span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.90pt;font-weight:bold;margin-left:0%;">Principal Risks</span>
You could lose money by investing in the Fund. An investment in the Fund is not a deposit of a bank and is not insured or guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or any other governmental agency. There can be no assurance that the Fund’s investment objective will be achieved. The order of the below risk factors does not indicate the significance of any particular risk factor.AUTHORIZED PARTICIPANT CONCENTRATION RISK. Only an authorized participant may engage in creation or redemption transactions directly with the Fund. A limited number of institutions act as authorized participants for the Fund. To the extent that these institutions exit the business or are unable to proceed with creation and/or redemption orders and no other authorized participant steps forward to create or redeem, the Fund’s shares may trade at a premium or discount to the Fund’s net asset value and possibly face delisting.CYBER SECURITY RISK. The Fund is susceptible to operational risks through breaches in cyber security. A breach in cyber security refers to both intentional and unintentional events that may cause the Fund to lose proprietary information, suffer data corruption or lose operational capacity. Such events could cause the Fund to incur regulatory penalties, reputational damage, additional compliance costs associated with corrective measures and/or financial loss. Cyber security breaches may involve unauthorized access to the Fund’s digital information systems through “hacking” or malicious software coding but may also result from outside attacks such as denial-of-service attacks through efforts to make network services unavailable to intended users. In addition, cyber security breaches of the issuers of securities in which the Fund invests or the Fund’s third-party service providers, such as its administrator, transfer agent, custodian, or sub-advisor, as applicable, can also subject the Fund to many of the same risks associated with direct cyber security breaches. Although the Fund has established risk management systems designed to reduce the risks associated with cyber security, there is no guarantee that such efforts will succeed, especially because the Fund does not directly control the cyber security systems of issuers or third-party service providers.EQUITY SECURITIES RISK. The value of the Fund’s shares will fluctuate with changes in the value of the equity securities in which it invests. Equity securities prices fluctuate for several reasons, including changes in investors’ perceptions of the financial condition of an issuer or the general condition of the relevant equity market, such as market volatility, or when political or economic events affecting an issuer occur. Common stock prices may be particularly sensitive to rising interest rates, as the cost of capital rises and borrowing costs increase. Equity securities may decline significantly in price over short or extended periods of time, and such declines may occur in the equity market as a whole, or they may occur in only a particular country, company, industry or sector of the market.INDEX CONSTITUENT RISK. The Fund may be a constituent of one or more indices. As a result, the Fund may be included in one or more index-tracking exchange-traded funds or mutual funds. Being a component security of such a vehicle could greatly affect the trading activity involving the Fund’s shares, the size of the Fund and the market volatility of the Fund. Inclusion in an index could increase demand for the Fund and removal from an index could result in outsized selling activity in a relatively short period of time. As a result, the Fund’s net asset value could be negatively impacted and the Fund’s market price may be below the Fund’s net asset value during certain periods. In addition, index rebalances may potentially result in increased trading activity in the Fund’s shares.LARGE CAPITALIZATION COMPANIES RISK. Large capitalization companies may grow at a slower rate and be less able to adapt to changing market conditions than smaller capitalization companies. Thus, the return on investment in securities of large capitalization companies may be less than the return on investment in securities of small and/or mid capitalization companies. The performance of large capitalization companies also tends to trail the overall market during different market cycles.MANAGEMENT RISK. The Fund is subject to management risk because it is an actively managed portfolio. In managing the Fund’s investment portfolio, the portfolio managers will apply investment techniques and risk analyses that may not produce the desired result. There can be no guarantee that the Fund will meet its investment objective.MARKET CAPITALIZATION DEVIATION RISK. There can be no assurance that the securities held by the Fund will stay within the Fund’s intended market capitalization range. As a result, the Fund may be exposed to additional risk or investors may not be given the opportunity to invest fully in a certain market capitalization range.MARKET MAKER RISK. The Fund faces numerous market trading risks, including the potential lack of an active market for Fund shares due to a limited number of market markers. Decisions by market makers or authorized participants to reduce their role or step away from these activities in times of market stress could inhibit the effectiveness of the arbitrage process in maintaining the relationship between the underlying values of the Fund’s portfolio securities and the Fund’s market price. The Fund may rely on a small number of third-party market makers to provide a market for the purchase and sale of shares. Any trading halt or other problem relating to the trading activity of these market makers could result in a dramatic change in the spread between the Fund’s net asset value and the price at which the Fund’s shares are trading on the Exchange, which could result in a decrease in value of the Fund’s shares. This reduced effectiveness could result in Fund shares trading at a discount to net asset value and also in greater than normal intraday bid-ask spreads for Fund shares.MARKET RISK. Market risk is the risk that a particular security, or shares of the Fund in general, may fall in value. Securities are subject to market fluctuations caused by such factors as economic, political, regulatory or market developments, changes in interest rates and perceived trends in securities prices. Shares of the Fund could decline in value or underperform other investments. In addition, local, regional or global events such as war, acts of terrorism, spread of infectious diseases or other public health issues, recessions, or other events could have a significant negative impact on the Fund and its investments. For example, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic and the aggressive responses taken by many governments, including closing borders, restricting international and domestic travel, and the imposition of prolonged quarantines or similar restrictions, has had negative impacts, and in many cases severe impacts, on markets worldwide. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused prolonged disruptions to the normal business operations of companies around the world and the impact of such disruptions is hard to predict. Such events may affect certain geographic regions, countries, sectors and industries more significantly than others. Such events could adversely affect the prices and liquidity of the Fund’s portfolio securities or other instruments and could result in disruptions in the trading markets. Any of such circumstances could have a materially negative impact on the value of the Fund’s shares and result in increased market volatility. During any such events, the Fund’s shares may trade at increased premiums or discounts to their net asset value.MULTI-MANAGER RISK. The Sub-Advisors selected may underperform the market generally or other sub-advisors that could have been selected. Each Sub-Advisor makes investment recommendations independently. It is possible that the security recommendation processes of the Sub-Advisors may not complement one another. In addition, the multi-manager approach could increase the Fund’s portfolio turnover rate which may result in higher transaction costs and additional taxes.NON-DIVERSIFICATION RISK. The Fund is classified as “non-diversified” under the 1940 Act. As a result, the Fund is only limited as to the percentage of its assets which may be invested in the securities of any one issuer by the diversification requirements imposed by the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. The Fund may invest a relatively high percentage of its assets in a limited number of issuers. As a result, the Fund may be more susceptible to a single adverse economic or regulatory occurrence affecting one or more of these issuers, experience increased volatility and be highly invested in certain issuers.PREMIUM/DISCOUNT RISK. The market price of the Fund’s shares will generally fluctuate in accordance with changes in the Fund’s net asset value as well as the relative supply of and demand for shares on the Exchange. The Fund’s investment advisor cannot predict whether shares will trade below, at or above their net asset value because the shares trade on the Exchange at market prices and not at net asset value. Price differences may be due, in large part, to the fact that supply and demand forces at work in the secondary trading market for shares will be closely related, but not identical, to the same forces influencing the prices of the holdings of the Fund trading individually or in the aggregate at any point in time. However, given that shares can only be purchased and redeemed in Creation Units, and only to and from broker-dealers and large institutional investors that have entered into participation agreements (unlike shares of closed-end funds, which frequently trade at appreciable discounts from, and sometimes at premiums to, their net asset value), the Fund’s investment advisor believes that large discounts or premiums to the net asset value of shares should not be sustained. During stressed market conditions, the market for the Fund’s shares may become less liquid in response to deteriorating liquidity in the market for the Fund’s underlying portfolio holdings, which could in turn lead to differences between the market price of the Fund’s shares and their net asset value.SIGNIFICANT EXPOSURE RISK. To the extent that the Fund invests a large percentage of its assets in a single asset class or the securities of issuers within the same country, state, region, industry or sector, an adverse economic, business or political development may affect the value of the Fund’s investments more than if the Fund were more broadly diversified. A significant exposure makes the Fund more susceptible to any single occurrence and may subject the Fund to greater market risk than a fund that is more broadly diversified.TRADING ISSUES RISK. Trading in Fund shares on the Exchange may be halted due to market conditions or for reasons that, in the view of the Exchange, make trading in shares inadvisable. In addition, trading in Fund shares on the Exchange is subject to trading halts caused by extraordinary market volatility pursuant to the Exchange’s “circuit breaker” rules. There can be no assurance that the requirements of the Exchange necessary to maintain the listing of the Fund will continue to be met or will remain unchanged. The Fund may have difficulty maintaining its listing on the Exchange in the event the Fund’s assets are small, the Fund does not have enough shareholders, or if the Fund is unable to proceed with creation and/or redemption orders.
<span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial;font-size:9.90pt;font-weight:bold;margin-left:0%;">Performance</span>
The Fund has not yet operated for a full calendar year and, therefore, performance information is not included in this section of the prospectus. See "Total Return Information" for performance information regarding the Fund.