ALPS Launches IDOG, An Int’l SDOG

ALPS, the fund marketing company and ETF sponsor that brought the ALPS Sector Dividend Dogs ETF (SDOG) to market a year ago, today will launch an international version of its successful ALPS International Sector Dividend Dogs ETF (IDOG).

The ALPS International Sector Dividend Dogs ETF (IDOG) will cost 50 basis points a year, or $50 for each $10,000 invested, according to the fund’s latest prospectus —a bit more than the 40-basis-point cost of SDOG, which now has assets of $275.5 million.

Michael Akins, senior vice president and portfolio manager for the ALPS ETF Trust, told IndexUniverse that "the increased fee relative to SDOG is to account for higher international custody fees" related to IDOG. He went on to point out that IDOG's 0.50 expense ratio is competitive within the international dividend fund space.

ALPS first put IDOG into registration in early April . It is a dividend-focused equities fund made up of the highest-paying dividend stocks from developed countries outside the Americas. The underlying index is the S-Network International Sector Dividend Dogs Index, which selects stocks off companies whose domicile and primary exchange listings are in countries in Europe, Australia and the Far East and are identified by the World Bank as high income.

"The S-Net DMI is a more liquid, better-capitalized version of the MSCI EAFE," explained Akins.

The index will meanwhile exclude stocks from the Americas and from countries that don’t have stock exchanges; were members of the former Comecon; and whose companies, in the opinion of the index provider, have idiosyncratic dividend policies.

IDOG plans to deliver on the high-payout dividend promise by selecting the top-dividend-paying stocks in each sector of the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), selecting the five-highest-paying dividend stocks from each GICS sector to create an equally weighted, 50-security basket.

IDOG rebalances quarterly and reselects stocks annually, if necessary, based on each stock’s dividend payouts as of the last trading day in November.

IDOG’s underlying index was developed by S-Network Global Indexes LLC, and its publication began on June 10, 2013. Standard ' Poor’s serves as calculation agent, the prospectus said.

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