Fidelity Sustainable High Yield ETF
At its October 2021 meeting, the Board of Trustees, including the Independent Trustees (together, the Board), voted to approve the management contract with Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC (FMR) and the sub-advisory agreements with affiliates of FMR (together, the Advisory Contracts) for the fund. FMR and the sub-advisers are collectively referred to herein as the Investment Advisers. The Board, assisted by the advice of fund counsel and Independent Trustees' counsel, considered a broad range of information.
Nature, Extent, and Quality of Services Provided. The Board considered Fidelity's staffing as it relates to the fund, including the backgrounds of investment personnel of Fidelity, and also considered the fund's investment objectives, strategies, and related investment philosophies. The Board considered the structure of the investment personnel compensation program and whether the structure provides appropriate incentives to act in the best interests of the fund.
Resources Dedicated to Investment Management and Support Services. The Board and the Fund Oversight and Research Committees reviewed the general qualifications and capabilities of Fidelity's investment staff, including their size, education, experience, and resources, as well as Fidelity's approach to recruiting, training, managing, and compensating investment personnel. The Board noted that Fidelity has continued to increase the resources devoted to non-U.S. offices, including expansion of Fidelity's global investment organization. The Board also noted that Fidelity's analysts have extensive resources, tools and capabilities that allow them to conduct sophisticated quantitative and fundamental analysis, as well as credit analysis of issuers, counterparties and guarantors. Further, the Board considered that Fidelity's investment professionals have sufficient access to global information and data so as to provide competitive investment results over time, and that those professionals also have access to sophisticated tools that permit them to assess portfolio construction and risk and performance attribution characteristics continuously, as well as to transmit new information and research conclusions rapidly around the world. Additionally, in its deliberations, the Board considered Fidelity's trading, risk management, compliance, and technology and operations capabilities and resources, which are integral parts of the investment management process. The Board also considered Fidelity's investments in business continuity planning, and its success in continuously providing services to the Fidelity funds notwithstanding the severe disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shareholder and Administrative Services. The Board considered the nature, extent, quality, and cost of advisory, administrative, and shareholder services to be performed by the Investment Advisers, and their affiliates under the Advisory Contracts and under separate agreements covering pricing and bookkeeping and securities lending services for the fund. The Board also considered the nature and extent of the supervision of third-party service providers, principally transfer agents, custodians, subcustodians, and pricing vendors.
The Board noted that the growth of fund assets over time across the complex allows Fidelity to reinvest in the development of services designed to enhance the value and convenience of the Fidelity funds as investment vehicles. These services include 24-hour access to account information and market information over the Internet and through telephone representatives, investor education materials and asset allocation tools, and the expanded availability of Fidelity Investor Centers.
Investment Performance. The fund is a new fund and therefore had no historical performance for the Board to review at the time it approved the fund's Advisory Contracts.
Based on its review, the Board concluded that the nature, extent, and quality of services to be provided to the fund under the Advisory Contracts should benefit the shareholders of the fund.
Competitiveness of Management Fee and Total Expense Ratio. In reviewing the Advisory Contracts, the Board considered the fund's all-inclusive fee rate. The Board also considered other expenses, such as transfer agent fees, pricing and bookkeeping fees, and custodial, legal, and audit fees, paid by FMR under the all-inclusive arrangement. The Board noted that the fund's proposed management fee rate is above the median fee rate of funds with similar Lipper investment objective categories and comparable investment mandates, regardless of whether their management fee structures are comparable. The Board also considered that the projected total expense ratio of the fund is above the median of those funds used by the Board for management fee comparisons. The Board also noted that when compared to a subset of funds within its peer group that are actively managed ETFs with high yield objectives, the fund’s proposed management fee and projected total expense ratio fall within the subset’s range of fees.
Based on its review, the Board concluded that the fund's management fee and projected total expense ratio were reasonable in light of the services that the fund and its shareholders will receive and the other factors considered.
Costs of the Services and Profitability. The fund is a new fund and therefore no revenue, cost, or profitability data was available for the Board to review in respect of the fund at the time it approved the Advisory Contracts. In connection with its future renewal of the fund's Advisory Contracts, the Board will consider the revenues earned and the expenses incurred by Fidelity in conducting the business of developing, marketing, distributing, managing, administering and servicing the fund and servicing the fund's shareholders.
Economies of Scale. The Board will consider economies of scale when there is operating experience to permit assessment thereof. It noted that, notwithstanding the entrepreneurial risk associated with a new fund, the management fee was at a level normally associated, by comparison with competitors, with very high fund net assets, and Fidelity asserted to the Board that the level of the fee anticipated economies of scale at lower asset levels even before, if ever, economies of scale are achieved. The Board also noted that the fund and its shareholders would have access to the very considerable number and variety of services available through Fidelity and its affiliates.
