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Fidelity MSCI Health Care Index ETF (FHLC): A Passive Window on the U.S. Health Care Sector

Published September 8, 202612 min read·TickerFile Research · Fidelity MSCI Health Care Index ETF (FHLC)
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FHLC is not an operating company and it never becomes one in the sense that matters for equity research. It is the Fidelity MSCI Health Care Index ETF, a passive index fund that trades on NYSE Arca and mirrors the MSCI USA IMI Health Care 25/50 Index. Its issuer is FMR LLC, and its SEC filings roll up into the Fidelity Covington Trust, an ETF registration vehicle rather than an EDGAR operating registrant. The ticker is absent from the SEC company tickers file for that reason, and any screen that expects a 10-K or 10-Q from a single issuer is looking in the wrong place.

The fund launched in late 2013, and it holds roughly 350 U.S. health care stocks, from pharmaceuticals to devices to managed care. It is not a small or speculative vehicle. Net assets sit near 3.5 billion, and the share price has moved from the low 60s to the high 80s over the trailing year. The trailing 12-month total return has been on the order of 19 percent. That performance is not alpha. It is the performance of the U.S. health care sector itself, delivered at an expense ratio of about 0.08 percent. The correct frame for FHLC is therefore not a company thesis but a sector exposure thesis. The questions worth asking are where U.S. health care valuation and cash flows are headed, how concentrated the index has become, and whether the fund's passive structure is the right way to own the outcome.