Janus Henderson Adds Active Real Estate ETF

Janus Henderson Group added another actively managed ETF to its portfolio with its Janus Henderson U.S. Real Estate ETF (JRE), which debuted on the NYSE Arca on Wednesday.

Portfolio manager Greg Kuhl told ETF.com that the fund will be overweight on subsectors it views as being set for growth before the pandemic—such as REITs for e-commerce hubs, data centers and cell towers—along with housing providers for the aging baby boomer population and developers targeting millennials looking for single-family homes.

It’ll also start by underweighting sectors it views as having long-term downside, such as regional malls and other shared brick-and-mortar retail assets. Janus is eschewing interest in those assets despite their recent success due to the broad reopening of the in-person economy thanks to widespread vaccine distribution.

“I think our view would be that the last 18 months of abnormality actually haven't changed all that much, in terms of the long term, about what's been happening in real estate,” Kuhl said. “All that's really happened is they accelerated some of those trends that were already happening.”

Approximately 80% of the fund’s assets are earmarked for use in the U.S., with the rest free for use in Canada.

The fund will start off with a 0.65% expense ratio that’ll fall to 0.6% if the fund hits $250 million in assets, and fall to a floor of 0.5% if the fund reaches $1 billion in assets.

At that starting price, JRE is 30 basis points more expensive than the Invesco Active U.S. Real Estate ETF (PSR), but 3 basis points cheaper than the ALPS Active REIT ETF (REIT).

Janus Henderson has approximately $4.19 billion in assets under management between six funds as of Tuesday, with the lion’s share worth $2.91 billion in the Janus Henderson Short Duration Income ETF (VNLA).

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