The Polen Capital Global Growth ETF fell 2.85% (NAV return) and 2.61% (market price return) during the fourth quarter of 2025, underperforming the MSCI ACWI Index (up 3.29%). The Morningstar Global Large Cap Growth Fund peer group returned 0.30% in the quarter.

Since Inception: 8/29/2023

Gross Expense Ratio: 0.85%  Net Expense Ratio 0.85%

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Quarterly Portfolio Manager Commentary

In some ways, the fourth quarter of 2025 felt like a microcosm of the year overall. Similar to the tariff-related drawdown in the first quarter that gave way to a V-shaped recovery off the April lows, the fourth quarter featured a sharp 5% sell-off that was erased as quickly as it came with global stocks returning to all-time highs later in the quarter. In short, fears around the potential AI bubble forming prompted this short-lived weakness, with NVIDIA’s strong earnings report in late November allaying the worst of those concerns. Without missing a beat, high beta stocks resumed style factor leadership into the end of the year. In these environments, our quality-heavy portfolio has faced relative performance headwinds. Our software holdings were market laggards, especially Oracle (discussed below) even though virtually all of them are growing their revenue and earnings at or above our expectations. We remain focused on competitive advantages and long-term business fundamentals, while at the same time constantly re-assessing the growth trajectories of our portfolio companies, all of which compete in global markets that are continually evolving.

Fund Performance & Attribution

In Q4 2025, the Polen Global Growth ETF (the “Fund”) fell 2.85% (NAV) compared to a gain of 3.29% for the MSCI All Country World Index (the “Index”). Top relative contributors to the Fund’s performance included Eli Lilly, Alphabet, and Shopify. The top absolute contributors were Eli Lilly, Alphabet, and TSMC. The largest relative detractors in the quarter were Oracle, Paycom Software, and CoStar Group. The largest absolute detractors were Oracle, Paycom Software, and CoStar Group.

Eli Lilly was the top performing relative contributor in Q4. Lilly’s stock price underperformed this year, much of it on the back of drug pricing concerns, potential tariff impacts and, perhaps, less enthusiasm for GLP-1 drugs. However, the stock rallied over 40% in Q4, supported by strong financial results, enthusiasm for its upcoming oral GLP-1 launch, and a White House agreement that lowers GLP-1 prices, expanding the U.S. addressable market and providing a long runway for future growth.

The primary drag for the quarter was Oracle, accounting for almost all of the Fund’s relative underperformance in Q4, completely reversing its performance from the prior quarter and giving back all of the gains experienced in Q3. Fortunately, we trimmed the position after the big run up. In line with waning market enthusiasm in the AI trade, Oracle’s massive increase in RPO’s (remaining performance obligations, which are essentially contracted future revenues) have been met with increased skepticism given the large percentage which is tied to OpenAI and the associated question marks over OpenAI’s ability to finance itself and therefore make good on those commitments. It would appear that investors are focused on the increasing threats of execution risk and financing risk for both Oracle and OpenAI, as opposed to the excitement of prior quarters around the magnitude of the numbers and their implied growth. We recognize and acknowledge these risks, but it is our current belief that the range of potential outcomes are skewed positively in Oracle’s favor and that the stock reaction is another example of the ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ mindset of the market today. We currently have an average-sized weighting in the Fund and, as we always do, will re-assess this conviction based on our ongoing research.

Fund Activity

In Q4 2025, we initiated a new position in Tencent Holdings and Spotify and sold our positions in Sage Group, Willis Towers Watson, ICON Plc, and Workday. We also added to our existing holdings in TSMC, MercadoLibre, Siemens Healthineers, L’Oreal, NVIDIA, Alphabet, and Boston Scientific and trimmed our exposure to Oracle, Paycom Software, Shopify, Adobe, Amazon, and SAP.

We initiated a position in Tencent, one of China’s largest technology companies with leading positions in gaming, social media and payments. The Fund last exited Tencent in 2021 amid a weak Chinese macro-economy and a political initiative that targeted the Technology sector and a few of its business leaders. Some of these pressures have since eased—namely the political crackdown—while the economic headwinds remain. Despite these headwinds, Tencent has remained a consistent growth business, compounding earnings growth at more than 30% annualized over the past 3 years. Furthermore, the integration of more AI into Tencent’s ad-tech could unlock higher returns on investment and accelerate growth in that segment. Altogether we believe the valuation is quite reasonable for a company that has the potential to grow revenues sustainably at a low double-digit rate and earnings at a mid-teens rate.

We also initiated a position in Spotify which continues to execute at a high level in our opinion. Spotify’s business is a scaled two-sided network enjoying secular growth as streaming and smartphone proliferation are now a global norm. We believe music is the most under-monetized form of digital entertainment and as the largest streaming network in the world, Spotify serves more than 600 million active users, a majority of whom use the service with ad-supported content. A large and growing paying user base of more than 250 million regularly consume content from the platform. As an entertainment destination in most users’ pockets, we see continued engagement growth ahead. Progress in adding new users, converting ad-supported listeners to paid subscribers and driving higher engagement with new offerings like podcasts, audio books and videos all enable profit and free cash flow growth. We believe these drivers can deliver greater than 20% annual free cash flow growth for the next five years.

By contrast, we exited our small position in Sage Group to help fund our new positions in Spotify and Tencent. Sage’s business is doing fine but we believe there are better opportunities currently in those other businesses and without the confidence to add to our current weight, we feel it is more appropriate to move on from the business for the time being.

Additionally, we exited our position in Willis Towers Watson. While we believe the company is performing fine from an operational standpoint, we couldn’t justify owning two insurance brokers with the possibility of the insurance industry entering a “soft market” period for the next few years. Should our view on the industry turn more positive we can add to our current position in Aon, the market leader and a company that has historically navigated softer market periods well.

We also decided to exit our relatively small position in ICON plc. We remain optimistic about Icon’s long-term prospects but growth for the company in the short to intermediate term still appears challenged to us. Without the conviction to add to our existing weight we feel it is better to reallocate to other opportunities where the business momentum is stronger. Finally, we have exited our relatively small position in Workday. The company’s growth has decelerated the past few quarters and the Financials segment of the business (~25% of sales) is growing slower than we believe it should be. This is a company we may revisit at a later date but, for now, feel that we have better opportunities in other areas of the portfolio.

Outlook

Despite the market’s lingering doubts over the future return on investment from the vast amounts of datacenter capex, it is our current belief that this capex cycle should continue for the foreseeable future; revenues and earnings for the critical players continue to grow at rapid rates as they struggle to keep up with increasing demand, hyperscaler management teams continue to guide higher spending out into future years, and there appears to be no shortage of capital to fund these projects as the debt markets have now begun to get involved – all combined with a pro-AI government and likely further rate cuts ahead in 2026, this set up suggests to us that the datacenter capex cycle and equity bull market has plenty of room to run.

Against that backdrop, we believe we have a Fund that can continue to deliver above-average earnings growth and solid gains should that scenario eventuate, while at the same time not relying on that singular theme to drive the Fund no matter how attractive it might appear to be. In fact, the majority of the strategy’s exposure intentionally resides in sectors, industries and companies outside of the Gen AI and datacenter capex themes, and that we believe can perform well regardless of underlying market driver.

Thank you for your interest in Polen Capital. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments.