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Should You Invest in the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB)?

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The iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB - Free Report) was launched on 05/01/2006, and is a passively managed exchange traded fund designed to offer broad exposure to the Industrials - Engineering and Construction segment of the equity market.

While an excellent vehicle for long term investors, passively managed ETFs are a popular choice among institutional and retail investors due to their low costs, transparency, flexibility, and tax efficiency.

Investor-friendly, sector ETFs provide many options to gain low risk and diversified exposure to a broad group of companies in particular sectors. Industrials - Engineering and Construction is one of the 16 broad Zacks sectors within the Zacks Industry classification. It is currently ranked 1, placing it in top 6%.

Index Details

The fund is sponsored by Blackrock. It has amassed assets over $2.40 billion, making it one of the largest ETFs attempting to match the performance of the Industrials - Engineering and Construction segment of the equity market. ITB seeks to match the performance of the Dow Jones U.S. Select Home Construction Index before fees and expenses.

The Dow Jones U.S. Select Home Builders Index is a subset of the Dow Jones U.S. Household Goods Index. It is a free-float adjusted market capitalization-weighted index. It measures the performance of the home construction sector of the U.S. equity market.

Costs

Investors should also pay attention to an ETF's expense ratio. Lower cost products will produce better results than those with a higher cost, assuming all other metrics remain the same.

Annual operating expenses for this ETF are 0.39%, making it one of the cheaper products in the space.

It has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 0.59%.

Sector Exposure and Top Holdings

Even though ETFs offer diversified exposure that minimizes single stock risk, investors should also look at the actual holdings inside the fund. Luckily, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.

This ETF has heaviest allocation in the Consumer Discretionary sector--about 77.30% of the portfolio. Industrials and Materials round out the top three.

Looking at individual holdings, D R Horton Inc (DHI - Free Report) accounts for about 15.02% of total assets, followed by Lennar A Corp (LEN - Free Report) and Nvr Inc (NVR - Free Report) .

The top 10 holdings account for about 64.71% of total assets under management.

Performance and Risk

Year-to-date, the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF has added roughly 44.20% so far, and was up about 53.04% over the last 12 months (as of 07/13/2023). ITB has traded between $50.75 and $87.15 in this past 52-week period.

The ETF has a beta of 1.39 and standard deviation of 30.82% for the trailing three-year period, making it a high risk choice in the space. With about 52 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk.

Alternatives

IShares U.S. Home Construction ETF holds a Zacks ETF Rank of 2 (Buy), which is based on expected asset class return, expense ratio, and momentum, among other factors. Because of this, ITB is a great option for investors seeking exposure to the Industrials ETFs segment of the market. There are other additional ETFs in the space that investors could consider as well.

Invesco Dynamic Building & Construction ETF (PKB - Free Report) tracks Dynamic Building & Construction Intellidex Index and the SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB - Free Report) tracks S&P Homebuilders Select Industry Index. Invesco Dynamic Building & Construction ETF has $240.74 million in assets, SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF has $1.41 billion. PKB has an expense ratio of 0.57% and XHB charges 0.35%.

Bottom Line

To learn more about this product and other ETFs, screen for products that match your investment objectives and read articles on latest developments in the ETF investing universe, please visit Zacks ETF Center.

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