Hedged Equity Premium Income ETF

Philosophy

Equity Selection: Guardian Capital LP, the Fund’s sub-adviser (the “Sub-Adviser”), will employ a system driven bottom-up research approach to assess relative value and capital growth potential within a broad stock selection universe. The Fund maintains a mid- to large-capitalization bias and typically invests in a range of sectors and geographic regions. The Sub-Adviser seeks to isolate stock selection as the primary source of capital appreciation.

The Sub-Adviser will use a quantitative approach, including the use of artificial intelligence (“AI”) technology such as machine learning, deep learning and large language models, to analyze multiple fundamental and alternative factors and incorporate financial data and other information relevant to the issuer. Such factors considered by the Sub-Adviser include quantitative measures, such as AI driven predicted earnings growth, predicted dividend growth, predicted volatility, and valuation, as well as traditional factors such as historical earnings growth, momentum, relative price strength, value, size, quality, and potential for debt reduction. The Sub-Adviser will seek out companies that it believes have potential for capital growth. The Sub-Adviser may also seek a sustainable dividend yield, placing particular focus on dividend growth and dividend quality in making its assessments. The Sub-Adviser may also consider environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) factors as part of the investment process.

Options Overlay: To generate income in addition to the dividends received from the Fund’s investment in equities and to mitigate (or hedge against) downside risk, the Sub-Adviser will employ a dynamic option overlay strategy including covered call options and protective put options.

Under the covered call option strategy, the Sub-Adviser will generally write “out-of-the-money” call options on up to approximately 100% of the value of the Fund’s portfolio.  The Sub-Adviser may write covered call options on a lesser percentage of the portfolio, based on its discretion and market outlook. The amount of cash flow generated by the covered call option writing strategy will be dependent on market prices and the volatility of the underlying common stocks at the time of each sale.  In addition, the Sub-Adviser will seek to mitigate (or hedge against) downside risk in the portfolio by employing a protective put option strategy for capital preservation. The Fund employs these strategies to reduce exposure to market declines and to generate additional income, while recognizing that the Fund may not fully benefit from strong equity market growth.

In general, an option contract gives the purchaser of the option contract the right to purchase (for a call option) or sell (for a put option) the underlying asset at a specified price (the “strike price”), or for cash settled options, deliver cash equal to the difference in value of an underlying asset and the strike price. In exchange for selling the right to buy or sell the particular reference asset, the seller of an option contract receives income from the purchaser (i.e., a “premium”).