The Fund is actively managed and seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing, under normal market conditions, at least 80% of its total assets in equity securities, including common stock and depositary receipts, issued by publicly listed companies in emerging foreign markets that provide high “shareholder yield.” The Fund’s investment adviser, Cambria Investment Management, L.P. (“Cambria” or the “Adviser”), defines “shareholder yield” as the totality of returns realized by an investor from a company’s cash payments for dividends, buybacks and debt paydowns. The Adviser considers an issuer to be in an emerging market if it is domiciled or principally traded in any of the following countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Hong Kong (Chinese domicile), Hungary, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, or a market with similar characteristics as the aforementioned. The Adviser will update the list of emerging markets annually.

For the purposes of this strategy, Cambria calculates a company’s shareholder yield by considering the following characteristics: (i) dividend payments to shareholders, (ii) return of capital in the form of share buybacks (i.e., a company’s repurchase of its own shares from the marketplace, which, in turn, reduces the number of outstanding shares for continuing shareholders or generates proceeds for existing shareholders), and (iii) paydown of a company’s debt (i.e., reducing a company’s outstanding debt). Cambria believes that, while any one of these measures of a company’s cash flows, in isolation, is inadequate to determine the attractiveness of its equity securities, considered together these measures have the potential to result in the construction of a portfolio of companies with higher potential for income and capital appreciation.

Utilizing its own quantitative model, Cambria selects the top 20% of stocks in the initial universe of emerging market, publicly listed companies based on their shareholder yield, as measured by dividend payments and net share buybacks. Cambria’s quantitative algorithm then factors in the remaining stocks’ debt paydowns and applies a number of value metrics to create a composite, including metrics such as, but not limited to, price-to-book (P/B) ratio, price-to-sales (P/S) ratio, price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, price-to-free cash-flow (P/FCF or P/CF) ratio, and enterprise multiple (EV/EBITDA). Cambria then selects the top 100 stocks for inclusion in the Fund’s portfolio that exhibit, in the aggregate, the best combination of shareholder yield characteristics and value metrics. Although Cambria seeks to weight these stocks equally in the Fund’s portfolio, security weights may fluctuate in response to market conditions and investment opportunities.

Cambria screens the Fund’s portfolio to limit its exposure to any single country outside the United States to 30% of Fund assets. Although the Fund generally expects to invest in companies with larger market capitalizations, the Fund may invest in small- and mid-capitalization companies. As of August 1, 2024, the Fund had significant investment exposure to companies in the information technology, financials, and energy sectors, companies in Taiwan, South Africa and South Korea, as well as Chinese companies principally traded in Hong Kong; however, the Fund’s sector and geographic exposure may change from time to time.

The Fund may sell a security when Cambria believes that the security is overvalued or better investment opportunities are available, to invest in cash and cash equivalents, or to meet redemptions. Cambria expects to adjust the Fund’s holdings periodically to meet the investment criteria and target allocations (e.g., security weights and country-specific limits) established by the Fund’s quantitative algorithm. As a result, the Fund may experience high portfolio turnover.