USFR Dividend: Next Ex-Date, History & Total Return

The WisdomTree Floating Rate Treasury Fund (USFR) seeks to track the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Floating Rate Bond Index. That index measures the performance of floating rate public obligations of the U.S. Treasury, which the prospectus calls Floating Rate Notes, or FRNs. Under normal circumstances, at least 80% of the fund's total assets, exclusive of securities lending collateral, will be invested in the index's constituent securities and investments with substantially identical economic characteristics.¹

An FRN's interest rate is the sum of an index rate and a spread. The index rate is based on the highest accepted discount rate of the most recent 13-week T-bill auction, and it resets daily based on that weekly rate. The spread is the highest accepted discount margin at the note's initial auction and stays the same for the life of the FRN. FRNs pay interest quarterly until maturity.¹

USFR pays distributions monthly, and WisdomTree's distribution schedule notes that its dates are subject to change.²

The index is rules-based and market capitalization weighted. It is made up of FRNs with a minimum amount outstanding of one billion as of the monthly rebalancing date, the last business day of each month, and an eligible note must have an issue date on or before that date. The index excludes fixed-rate securities, Treasury inflation-protected securities, convertible bonds and bonds with survivor put options, and both the notes and their payments must be denominated in U.S. dollars.¹

Unlike fixed-rate Treasury bonds, FRNs have interest rates that adjust periodically, and those rates may be higher or lower than the rates on fixed-rate bonds of comparable quality with similar maturities. Because the index rate resets daily based on a weekly rate, the prospectus says an FRN's value generally fluctuates much less than a fixed-rate bond's in response to market interest rate movements.¹

WisdomTree's fact sheet describes the index as covering floating rate coupon U.S. Treasuries with a maturity greater than 12 months. The same fact sheet promotes the fund as providing "cost-effective access to newly issued US government floating rate notes," which it describes as designed to rise or fall with short-term rates and priced at a spread over 3-mo Treasury Bills.³

Dividend Stacker's record of past USFR payments covers completed calendar years, with per-share amounts adjusted for any share splits or reverse splits. The annual total was $0.514 per share in 2017, then rose 62.6% to $0.836 in 2018 and 24.6% to $1.04 in 2019.⁴

Payments then shrank sharply. The 2020 total fell 80.8% to $0.2004, and 2021 had just 3 distributions totaling $0.0058 per share, down 97.1% from 2020.⁴

The 2022 total climbed to $0.8956 across 11 distributions, up 15341.4% from 2021, and 2023 reached $2.57, up 187.2%. The 2024 total edged up 1.1% to $2.60, and the 2025 total came in at $2.09, down 19.8% from 2024.⁴

The prospectus notes that floating rate securities can be less sensitive to interest rate changes than fixed-rate ones, and they may still decline in value and negatively affect USFR's net asset value (NAV). That is particularly so if changes in prevailing interest rates are sudden or more frequent than the FRNs' rate changes, which currently occur weekly. FRN values will also decline if their index rates do not rise as much, or as quickly, as interest rates in general.¹

The prospectus also names interest rate risk, the risk that fixed income securities will decline in value because of an increase in interest rates and changes to other factors, such as perception of an issuer's creditworthiness. Under U.S. government securities risk, it says U.S. government securities may or may not be backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government and are subject to the risks associated with fixed income and debt securities, particularly interest rate risk and credit risk.¹

USFR's index provider can adjust the index or stop making it available without regard to the fund's interests, and errors in index data or calculations may go unidentified or uncorrected for a period of time or at all. The prospectus says the risk of a continuing error may be particularly heightened for this index, which is generally not used as a benchmark by other funds or managers.¹

The performance of USFR and its index may differ for a variety of reasons. The prospectus gives examples, including operating expenses and portfolio transaction costs that the index does not incur, and says the fund's use of sampling techniques also may affect its ability to achieve close correlation with the index.¹