Seraphim New Space UCITS ETF (SPCE US$7.481; SERA, 552.7p)
Written by Andrew McHattie, Editor, Active ETF Newsletter; originally published in September 2026 and sent directly to subscribers
We will add this additional new issue in parentheses because we are not sure whether it truly counts as an active ETF – that is an interesting discussion in itself, and we will come on to it. This fund is definitely of interest though because it has been launched by Seraphim, who describe themselves as the world’s leading specialist investors in SpaceTech, backing technologies that strengthen global security, enable resilient infrastructure, and address the planet’s most urgent challenges. Since 2016, Seraphim has invested in more than 150 SpaceTech companies across 33 countries, with portfolio companies collectively raising more than US$10 billion of capital, producing nine unicorns and six IPOs. They already manage the Seraphim Space Investment Trust (SSIT, 178p), which we have written about extensively and recommended in our sister Investment Trust Newsletter. The investment trust has overcome some initial scepticism to demonstrate the real and genuine growth credentials of the space sector, backed by rapidly-growing interest and revenues from the European defence industry. One particular winner for the investment trust has been a Finnish company called ICEYE that operates the world’s largest constellation of synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellites. Unlike conventional optical satellites, SAR can produce very high-resolution imagery at night and through cloud, rain and snow, allowing persistent monitoring and rapid detection of changes on the ground or at sea. Defence has become a major application. ICEYE provides intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for tracking military movements, infrastructure, borders, ports and maritime activity, either from its own constellation or through sovereign satellite systems owned and tasked by individual governments. Recent contracts include a €158m Finnish Defence Forces programme, sovereign systems for Poland and Sweden, expanded imagery provision to Ukraine, and, most significantly, a German Bundeswehr contract with Rheinmetall worth billions of euros, running to 2030 and providing persistent radar reconnaissance from a dedicated constellation. ICEYE is a great example of a new technology being employed profitably in the space industry.
The managers of the trust have raised some new money this year through a ‘C’ share issue, but they have sometimes been frustrated, we feel, at the discount rating on the trust that limits their ability to raise even more funds, more frequently. That may have been one factor behind their decision to launch an ETF in partnership with HANetf that can expand at any time as investor interest grows and can complement the existing investment trust very well.
The new ETF has two classes of share listed in London – the sterling shares with the ticker SERA, and the US dollar shares with the ticker SPCE. The shares are not available to trade on the major platforms yet, but we are confident they will be very shortly. The ETF is structured to track the Seraphim New Space Index, which the managers have built themselves, starting with a global universe of publicly listed SpaceTech companies and applying Seraphim’s proprietary scoring framework to identify businesses best positioned to potentially benefit from the long-term growth of the New Space economy. Companies are assessed across multiple factors including New Space revenue exposure, technology leadership, business quality, growth trajectory, capital efficiency and strategic alignment with key investment themes. Unlike traditional market-cap weighted indices, constituents are allocated using a transparent, conviction-weighted methodology, providing greater exposure to businesses that Seraphim believes are best positioned to benefit from the continued commercialisation of space and avoiding the concentration risk often associated with purely market-cap-based approaches.
This is why the distinction between a passive index-tracking ETF and an active stock-picking ETF is blurred. This new fund is designed to track the index, yes, but the index itself is effectively created to reflect the manager’s active preferences, so it seems to us that ‘active’ is a better label, if we must apply one.
This view is supported by the likely list of investments, which includes the ETF buying shares in the Seraphim Space Investment Trust, which is most certainly active. The ETF will have 10% in SSIT, followed by holdings in SpaceX, Voyager Technologies, HawkEye 360, AST SpaceMobile, BlackSky Technology, Redwire Corporation, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, and Amazon. It is considerably more diversified than the investment trust, and more US-centric, so it is actually quite different. We had initially thought that the investment trust would be an obvious preference because of its discount rating, but after seeing the construction of the ETF it becomes obvious that it is actually a very different offering, allowing access to a different dimension of the same industry. Mark Boggett, the chief executive of the managers, says “Old Space put humans on the moon. New Space is building the commercial infrastructure of the global economy. The convergence of AI and SpaceTech, together with rising demand for connectivity, defence and sovereign capability, is creating one of the most compelling investment opportunities of the coming decade. Until now, investors have had limited ways to access that opportunity through public markets. SERA changes that. Built on more than a decade of specialist SpaceTech investing, it provides a differentiated, pure-play route into the companies building the communications, intelligence and infrastructure that will underpin the future global economy.”
Having recommended SSIT quite heartily, we see no reason why we would not also recommend an investment in SERA: we think investors could happily hold both, as together they span the majority of the exciting commercial space market. It typically takes at least a few days for the investment platforms to provide availability to new issues, but if you are unable to deal through your stockbroker, be sure to ask them to add the shares on to their system.
This article is taken from Active ETF Newsletter. To receive our full coverage every month, subscribe now.