DEFR
Aptus Deferred Income ETF
ETF Series Solutions
Expense ratio1
0.79%
Net assets2
$105.36M
Holdings2
3
Category
Other
Return

Investment objective & strategy

As of Sept. 2, 2025 · prospectus

Objective. The Aptus Deferred Income ETF (the Fund) seeks to exceed the performance of the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index (the Index).

Strategy. The Fund is an actively managed exchange-traded fund (ETF) that seeks to achieve its objective by attempting to provide a tax-efficient return stream through investments in options, total return swaps, Treasury Bills and/or box spreads as opposed to traditional bond investments. The Fund seeks to maintain a risk profile comparable to the Index. The Fund manages its portfolio duration in a range between 75% and 125% of the Index, which generally has a duration in the range of five to eight years. Duration is a measure used to determine the sensitivity of a securitys price to changes in interest rates. The Fund prioritizes total return over an extended period while focusing on relative performance over shorter periods to minimize tracking … The Fund is an actively managed exchange-traded fund (ETF) that seeks to achieve its objective by attempting to provide a tax-efficient return stream through investments in options, total return swaps, Treasury Bills and/or box spreads as opposed to traditional bond investments. The Fund seeks to maintain a risk profile comparable to the Index. The Fund manages its portfolio duration in a range between 75% and 125% of the Index, which generally has a duration in the range of five to eight years. Duration is a measure used to determine the sensitivity of a securitys price to changes in interest rates. The Fund prioritizes total return over an extended period while focusing on relative performance over shorter periods to minimize tracking error against traditional bond investments. The Fund gains and manages duration exposure through investment in option combinations, employing either standard exchange-listed options or Flexible EXchange Options (FLEX), on Treasury and/or fixed-income ETFs. The Fund will purchase at-the-market call options and sell at-the-market put options on the same Treasury and/or fixed-income ETF issuer to achieve notional long exposure to the particular Treasury and/or fixed-income ETF issuer, and thus achieve a synthetic exposure to Treasuries. The Fund gains exposure to the spread component of a traditional bond allocation by selling (writing) put options with a notional value expected to align with the return profile of bond spreads over time. To implement this put writing strategy, rather than directly selling put options, the Fund expects to enter into total return swaps, which have the potential of deferring the return generated by this trading strategy. Selling (or writing) a put option gives the buyer the right to sell shares of the options reference asset at a specified price (the strike price) through the expiration date of the option (American-style options) or only at the expiration date (European-style options). The seller of the put option receives an amount (premium) for selling the option. In the event the reference asset declines in value below the strike price and the buyer exercises its put option, the buyer will be entitled to receive the difference between the strike price and the value of the reference asset (a gain offset by the premium originally paid for the option), and in the event the reference asset closes above the strike price as of the expiration date, the put option may end up worthless, resulting in a gain to the seller in the amount of premium received. A total return swap is an agreement whereby one party contracts to make periodic payments to another party based on the change in market value of certain underlying assets in exchange for periodic payments based on a fixed or variable interest rate or the total return of other underlying assets. Finally, the Fund will hold Treasury Bills and/or box spreads to provide a return on cash used as collateral for the options and total return swaps. An options contract provides a buyer the option to buy (call option) or sell (put option) an asset at a strike price on a future date. A box spread involves creating a synthetic long position in the asset by buying a call option and selling a put option with the same strike price and expiration date, paired with a synthetic short position in the same asset by selling a call option and buying a put option with the same strike price and expiration date, but with a different strike price than the synthetic long position in the asset. The difference in the strike prices between the synthetic long and synthetic short positions in the asset defines the box spreads return, aiming for a return independent of market movement. Box spreads have similar economic exposure as zero-coupon bonds, where profit or loss from the investment is equal to the price difference from initiation to expiration, or from when the zero-coupon bond was bought and when it was sold. The Fund will buy box spreads with varying expirations. The Fund favors options on ETFs that track market indexes, such as the Nasdaq-100 Index, for optimal risk-return balance and liquidity, with active trading essential given frequent 'rolling' of the box spreads to manage expirations and renew positions. The Fund will not invest directly in traditional fixed income securities; except that the Fund may invest directly in Treasury Bills; however, the derivatives utilized by the Fund may provide economic exposure equivalent to fixed income securities. The Index is unmanaged and measures the investment grade, U.S. dollar-denominated fixed-rate taxable bond market, with index components for government and corporate securities, asset-backed securities, and mortgage pass-through securities. The Fund is classified as non-diversified under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the 1940 Act). The Funds strategy may result in the active and frequent trading of the Funds investments, which may result in significant portfolio turnover.

Top holdings

As of Jan. 31, 2026 · N-PORT
SecurityTickerValue% of fund
US ULTRA BOND CBT Sep25 $51.35M 48.74%
US ULTRA BOND CBT Sep25 $46.41M 44.05%
U.S. Treasury Bills B $5.76M 5.47%
US ULTRA BOND CBT Sep25 $2.35M 2.23%
US ULTRA BOND CBT Sep25 $303.45K 0.29%
FIRST AM-TR OB-X TMPXX $245.87K 0.23%
US ULTRA BOND CBT Sep25 $65.75K 0.06%
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Allocation by sector

As of January 31, 2026 · N-PORT
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Portfolio moves

Oct 31, 2025 → Jan 31, 2026
Opened
1
Exited
1
Increased
2
Decreased
0
Unchanged
0

How many positions this fund opened, exited, grew, trimmed, or left unchanged between its two most recent N-PORT snapshots — net changes between point-in-time reports, not a trade log.

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FundOverlapNet exp.
Aptus January Buffer ETF · JANB 95% 0.25%
Aptus July Buffer ETF · JULB 95% 0.25%
Aptus October Buffer ETF · OCTB 94% 0.25%
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Footnotes

  1. Expense ratio as of September 2, 2025, from the fund's prospectus.
  2. Net assets and holdings count as of January 31, 2026, from the fund's N-PORT filing.

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