Baron First Principles ETF

Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) manufactures electric vehicles including sedans, SUVs/CUVs, a pickup truck, and a semi-truck. The company is also ramping up internal battery cell production, energy solutions, robotics offerings such as full self-driving and humanoids, and renewable energy generation and storage solutions.
We expect Tesla to continue growing its automotive business as it benefits from the secular adoption of electric vehicles, vertical integration, technological innovation, and cost advantages. The company is also leveraging its core automotive technologies to address the rapidly growing energy storage segment. In addition, Tesla's software and AI expertise is broadening the industrial opportunity to large and profitable revenue avenues that were previously locked in the legacy vehicle architecture, such as autonomous driving, robotics, insurance, and other AI use cases.

MSCI Inc. (MSCI) provides investment decision support tools to global investment institutions.
We believe MSCI, the de facto standard for measuring global market performance, is positioned to benefit from the continuing development of emerging markets, passive investing, sustainability, and the growth of global financial assets. We believe the company's indexes remain the global standard for cross-border investing and will continue to be selected by institutions when issuing new mandates. Both its index and multi-asset portfolio and risk analytics products are mission critical and deeply embedded in client workflows.

Hyatt Hotels Corporation (H) is a global hospitality company with 1,363 Hyatt-branded properties representing 326,845 keys. The company's brands include Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt, Hyatt Place, and Hyatt Summerfield Suite. It derives 90% of EBITDA from fees and 10% from owned assets.
We believe Hyatt has a significant opportunity to market more of its brands globally, given an undersupply of rooms across the world. Compared to peers, Hyatt has the lowest global brand penetration and the largest pipeline of unit growth. We believe its asset-light strategy and strong balance sheet, coupled with robust pricing for hotel assets, give Hyatt an opportunity to generate strong growth in earnings and cash flow, which the company could use for buybacks and tuck-in acquisitions.

Shopify Inc. (SHOP) is a cloud-based software provider offering an operating system for multi-channel commerce. The company serves over 3 million merchants that processed $375 billion of gross merchandise value (GMV) last year. Shopify is the second-largest e-commerce player in the U.S., as measured by GMV.
Shopify offers a scalable, end-to-end commerce platform that serves merchants of all sizes, including offline, international, and B2B businesses. Its aggregate scale, innovation, and ecosystem of partners allow merchants to run every part of their business on the Shopify platform. The company's access to real-time, transaction-level data across its merchant base strengthens its competitive position, allowing it to share the benefits of scale directly with its merchants. With less than 2% share of $25 trillion in global commerce (ex China), it has a long runway for growth.

The Charles Schwab Corporation (SCHW) is a discount brokerage firm offering securities brokerage and other financial services to individual investors directly and through independent financial advisors. The company has over $12 trillion in assets under custody.
Schwab’s emphasis on customer trust has made it a sterling brand in financial services. We believe its investor services division is well positioned to take share from traditional brokerages, while its institutional business continues to gain RIA relationships. The company has made acquisitions that have broadened its product offering and brought new customers onto the platform. As a result, we expect Schwab to retain clients while further lowering its industry-leading cost per client asset.

Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR) is an automated global electronic broker. The company provides low-cost execution, clearing, and settlement of trades for retail and institutional customers across multiple asset classes and currencies.
Interactive Brokers is gaining share due to its advanced technology, quality of execution, and low trading costs. We expect the company to continue growing rapidly through international expansion and as domestic RIAs depart traditional institutions to launch their own firms. Interactive Brokers' competitive advantage comes from automation through best-in-class software engineering, which enables it to offer industry-low costs to customers. Founder and Chairman Thomas Peterffy is well regarded and is the company's largest shareholder.

Gartner, Inc. (IT) is the leading independent provider of research and advisory services for IT, HR, sales, finance, and marketing leaders.
Gartner has a vast addressable market, which management estimates exceeds $100 billion annually, implying a penetration rate of less than 3%. Information technology is rapidly changing and growing in strategic importance, leading users to turn to third-party providers for insight into trends. Gartner enjoys retention rates around 100% driven by the low price of its research relative to value. We think consistent execution in Global Technology Sales and improvements in Global Business Sales will help accelerate Insights growth toward double-digit rates over time.

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) provides financial information to the global investment community.
FactSet serves only a small part of the addressable market, which we estimate at over $20 billion annually. The company offers broader datasets and more advanced portfolio analytics than peers and has a highly regarded customer service model. FactSet has also been expanding into the fixed income and wealth management markets. The company's products are sticky, leading to retention rates of over 95% and high visibility. FactSet generates robust free cash flow, which it has returned to shareholders via share repurchases and dividends.

Guidewire Software, Inc. (GWRE) is a leading provider of core systems software to the global property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry.
Guidewire is a small player in a vast addressable market and benefits from P&C insurers’ need to upgrade 30-year-old systems. The company offers best-in-class functionality, as evidenced by its growing installed base and near-100% retention rates. After a multi-year transition period, we think Guidewire’s cloud migration is largely complete, and we expect accelerating revenue, expanding margins, and improving free cash flow over the next several years. We believe recent M&A in the vertical software space supports a meaningful value creation opportunity for shareholders.

Verisk Analytics, Inc. (VRSK) provides risk information to the insurance industry, helping companies better understand and manage risks while optimizing decision-making processes.
We believe Verisk holds a unique competitive position. The company is investing to expand its product set in insurance and has divested its financial services and energy segments. We think this pure-play focus on insurance offers an attractive financial profile with mid- to high-single-digit organic growth, robust margins (with room for expansion), and strong free cash flow generation.

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