UMAX.TO DRIP & Distribution Calculator

What is UMAX.TO?

Hamilton Utilities YIELD MAXIMIZER ETF, launched June 14, 2024.

UMAX.TO — Hamilton Utilities YIELD MAXIMIZER™ ETF

UMAX is an income fund, not a growth fund — it's built for a high monthly payout from a basket of utility, pipeline, telecom, and railway companies, so judge it on yield and how sustainable that yield is, not on capital growth.

The fund holds roughly a dozen large Canadian (and some cross-listed) infrastructure-type companies in fairly equal weights — utilities, pipelines, telecom carriers, and railways. To boost the payout above what these stocks pay in regular dividends, the fund sells covered call options against the holdings, using a "flexible coverage ratio" that adjusts how much it sells specifically to hit a target yield. There's a real mechanical wrinkle here worth understanding: because utility-type stocks are naturally lower-volatility, generating a high yield from them requires writing options much closer to the current share price than you'd need for a more volatile stock — which caps away more of the potential upside than the same strategy would on a jumpier sector. The fund does not use borrowed money.

On fees: the management fee is 0.65%, stated plainly with no misleading "zero fee" headline.

Inception date: June 14, 2023 — a little over three years of history. Current distribution per unit: about $0.15/month, working out to a current yield around 13.6%. That distribution has drifted down noticeably since launch (it started around $0.175/month), a real detail worth watching alongside the still-high headline yield.

Since inception, the fund has averaged close to 8% a year on a total-return basis — meaningfully more modest than the double-digit average often associated with this style of fund, and one specific piece of analyst commentary is worth including here: the fund has notably lagged a comparable, non-covered-call basket of the same kind of stocks over the same period, which is the direct cost of writing those tightly-priced options to generate the yield. Performance has been steadily positive rather than sharply volatile so far, without a dramatic down period in its short history.

Official fund page →

Not sure how a fund like this generates its payout? See Covered-Call ETFs Explained.

Risk: Medium risk

What's the actual risk rating?

The official fund facts rate this "Medium" risk. Unlike some funds in this category, this one does have real tracked analyst opinion to check that against — recent coverage runs two buy calls and one sell, with the latest rating landing at "don't buy." The specific concerns raised: the yield is advertised at 15-16% in places, but a meaningful portion of that has been return of capital rather than actual investment income; and because the underlying stocks don't move much, the options strategy has to sacrifice more upside than it would on a more volatile portfolio, which shows up as real underperformance against a plain-vanilla version of the same sector exposure. One quantitative scoring source pointed the other way, flagging the fund as lower-risk-than-typical and the price as undervalued — a genuine disagreement rather than a clean consensus, worth knowing both sides of.

Plain-English bottom line: The official label is "Medium," and analyst opinion is genuinely split here — some caution around how sustainable the yield is and how much upside is given away, alongside at least one signal suggesting the current price is reasonable. This isn't a case of everyone agreeing the label is wrong in one direction; opinion is divided.

Price trend: Declining

A high yield alone doesn't say whether a fund's price is holding up or quietly being eaten away to help fund the payout — this looks at that separately, using the fund's real price history, not a prediction. Declining doesn't mean the fund is a bad choice; some funds are built to pay out more than they grow, on purpose. It just means part of what you're receiving may be a return of your own money rather than new income.

Est. -5.5%/yr price decline since inception (SI total return 8.1%/yr annualized over ~3.1 yrs since Jun 2023 vs. current yield ~13.57%)

This page is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. It does not account for taxes, fees, or changes in distribution rates, and past distributions are not a guarantee of future payments. Consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.

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