BILD vs GII

BILDCNomura Global Listed Infrastructure ETF

GIIAState Street SPDR S&P Global Infrastructure ETF

In short

BILD Most infrastructure ETFs hand you an index. BILD hands you a stock picker: global airports, toll roads, pipelines and utilities chosen company by company, at a flat 0.49% fee.

GII Toll roads, airports, pipelines and power grids in one ticker. GII has tracked the S&P Global Infrastructure Index since 2007, an early entrant in the category, and charges less than the typical infrastructure fund.

Stated mandate

BILD The fund seeks total return through capital growth and income by investing in infrastructure companies.

GII The fund seeks to track the total return of the S&P Global Infrastructure Index. That index provides exposure to large publicly listed infrastructure companies across transportation, utilities, and energy infrastructure.

Why people hold it

• BILD One flat 0.49% fee, with no waiver propping it up. The manager pays custody, audit and most other fund costs out of that number, and there is no 12b-1 charge.sec.govsec.gov 2
• Stock picked, not index copied. The manager researches issuers bottom up and can lean toward the airports, grids or pipelines it rates best.sec.gov
• Global by mandate: normally at least 40% of total assets in non-US securities (30% if conditions warrant), so it is not a US utility fund wearing a world label.sec.gov
• Longer history than the nameplate: it listed in 2023 as a Macquarie fund and came to Nomura through its purchase of Macquarie's US public investments business.sec.gov

• GII Tracks an index of 75 of the largest listed infrastructure companies, screened for float and liquidity, spread across transportation, utilities and energy infrastructure in developed and emerging markets.ssga.com
• 0.40% a year against a 0.55% median for infrastructure ETFs. The cheap end of a category that often is not cheap.
• Live since 2007, so the record covers the financial crisis, a decade of low rates and the 2022 rate shock. It rates among the strongest implementations in its infrastructure peer group.

Worth knowing

• BILD Below the category median on fee, yet index rivals undercut it: IFRA runs 0.30% and IGF 0.37%. The stock picking is what the gap pays for.
• A small fund that trades thinly, so bid-ask spreads can run wider than at the category's giants.
• The theme skews to regulated utilities and transport assets, so rate rulings, interest rates and energy prices steer it more than the broad market does.sec.gov

• GII IGF follows the same index for 0.37%, three basis points less. GII's own trading is moderate rather than heavy, so spreads count alongside the fee gap.
• Roughly 70 stocks across three sectors and several currencies. A focused, globally scattered book that can behave quite differently from a broad world equity fund.ssga.com
• Distributions arrive on an annual or semiannual schedule, so cash lands in lumps rather than monthly.

Full BILD profile⁠

Full GII profile⁠