The First Trust RBA American Industrial Renaissance ETF (AIRR) was launched on March 10, 2014, and is a passively managed exchange traded fund designed to offer broad exposure to the Industrials - Broad segment of the equity market.
While an excellent vehicle for long term investors, passively managed ETFs are a popular choice among institutional and retail investors due to their low costs, transparency, flexibility, and tax efficiency.
Investor-friendly, sector ETFs provide many options to gain low risk and diversified exposure to a broad group of companies in particular sectors. Industrials - Broad is one of the 16 broad Zacks sectors within the Zacks Industry classification. It is currently ranked 4, placing it in top 25%.
Index Details
The fund is sponsored by First Trust Advisors. It has amassed assets over $4.59 billion, making it one of the largest ETFs attempting to match the performance of the Industrials - Broad segment of the equity market. AIRR seeks to match the performance of the Richard Bernstein Advisors American Industrial Renaissance Index before fees and expenses.
The Richard Bernstein Advisors American Industrial Renaissance Index is measures the performance of small and mid cap US companies in the industrial and community banking sectors.
Costs
Investors should also pay attention to an ETF's expense ratio. Lower cost products will produce better results than those with a higher cost, assuming all other metrics remain the same.
Annual operating expenses for this ETF are 0.7%, making it one of the most expensive products in the space.
It has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 0.27%.
Sector Exposure and Top Holdings
It is important to delve into an ETF's holdings before investing despite the many upsides to these kinds of funds like diversified exposure, which minimizes single stock risk. And, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.
This ETF has heaviest allocation in the Industrials sector -- about 91.1% of the portfolio.
Looking at individual holdings, Dycom Industries, Inc. (DY) accounts for about 3.37% of total assets, followed by Emcor Group, Inc. (EME) and Bwx Technologies, Inc. (BWXT).
The top 10 holdings account for about 29.85% of total assets under management.
Performance and Risk
Year-to-date, the First Trust RBA American Industrial Renaissance ETF return is roughly 14.38% so far, and is up roughly 31.3% over the last 12 months (as of 08/06/2025). AIRR has traded between $61.92 and $88.54 in this past 52-week period.
The ETF has a beta of 1.29 and standard deviation of 24.95% for the trailing three-year period, making it a high risk choice in the space. With about 57 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk.
Alternatives
First Trust RBA American Industrial Renaissance ETF holds a Zacks ETF Rank of 2 (Buy), which is based on expected asset class return, expense ratio, and momentum, among other factors. Because of this, AIRR is an outstanding option for investors seeking exposure to the Industrials ETFs segment of the market. There are other additional ETFs in the space that investors could consider as well.
Vanguard Industrials ETF (VIS) tracks MSCI US Investable Market Industrials 25/50 Index and the Industrial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLI) tracks Industrial Select Sector Index. Vanguard Industrials ETF has $6.01 billion in assets, Industrial Select Sector SPDR ETF has $23.09 billion. VIS has an expense ratio of 0.09%, and XLI charges 0.08%.
Bottom Line
To learn more about this product and other ETFs, screen for products that match your investment objectives and read articles on latest developments in the ETF investing universe, please visit Zacks ETF Center.
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First Trust RBA American Industrial Renaissance ETF (AIRR): ETF Research ReportsThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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