What MBOX Is, and What It's Up Against
MBOX (Freedom Day Dividend ETF) is a small, actively managed dividend ETF that launched in May 2021. It has $146M in assets and a 0.39% expense ratio. A manager picks 30 to 50 dividend-paying large- and mid-cap stocks that trade on US exchanges (including some Canadian and European companies listed there) and re-scores them monthly, looking for companies likely to raise their dividends repeatedly. It currently holds 46.
Most of the money in dividend ETFs sits in index funds that follow fixed rules:
- SCHD (Schwab US Dividend Equity) screens for quality and yield.
- DGRO (iShares Core Dividend Growth) screens for dividend growth and sustainable payouts.
- VIG (Vanguard Dividend Appreciation) holds companies with 10+ years of dividend increases.
We also compare MBOX with VTV (Vanguard Morningstar Value ETF, called Vanguard Value until a July 2026 rename that didn't change how it's run). VTV is not a dividend fund. It owns the value half of large US stocks, ranked on several cheapness measures such as price-to-book and price-to-earnings. We use it as a yardstick because MBOX's portfolio leans toward value stocks, and a fund can "beat SCHD" just by owning a different slice of the market.
MBOX is pitched on two things. The first is performance. In an interview on the Dividend Stockpile YouTube channel, Freedom Day CEO Ryan Krueger said the fund has been "fortunate to be able to outperform pretty significantly most of the peers," while adding that he doesn't guarantee it will continue and that beating peers isn't his stated goal. The second is dividend growth. The issuer's strategy brief says the companies MBOX held at the end of 2023 had grown their dividends by an average of 14.3% a year over 10 years, 17.3% over five and 22.2% over three (an equal-weighted average of the holdings). We tested both on our own data. The short answer: the performance edge holds up against the dividend funds but not against a plain value index. The dividend growth belongs to the companies it holds, and it doesn't show up in the fund's own payout.
The Income: What MBOX Pays Right Now
Performance and yield figures are historical and may change. Total return includes price movement and distributions where available. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Yield is not the same as total return.
MBOX pays quarterly. Its most recent distribution was $0.1717 per share, with an ex-dividend date of September 28, 2026. At the October 2, 2026 closing price of $40.32, that payment works out to an annualized run-rate of 1.70%.
Over the trailing 12 months (four payments, October 2025 through September 2026), MBOX paid $0.7806 per share, a 1.94% trailing yield. Payments vary from quarter to quarter, so the latest one isn't a guarantee of the next.
| Metric (prices as of 10/2/2026 close) | MBOX |
| Latest distribution (ex-date 9/28/2026) | $0.1717/share |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| Annualized run-rate (latest × 4) | 1.70% |
| TTM distributions / yield | $0.7806 / 1.94% |
| Price / 52-week range | $40.32 / $33.99–$43.10 |
| Expense ratio | 0.39% |
| AUM | $146M |
Is the Income Eating the Principal? No.
From launch (May 5, 2021) to October 2, 2026, MBOX's share price rose 60.13%. Including distributions, total return was 79.69%. About 13.6 points of the 19.56-point gap came from the distributions themselves ($3.44 a share since launch, on a $25.18 launch price). The rest reflects compounding on reinvested payouts. The share price grew on top of the payouts, so there is no sign of NAV erosion.
| MBOX, 5/5/2021 → 10/2/2026 | Return |
| Price return (share price only) | +60.13% |
| Total return (price + distributions) | +79.69% |
| Gap (distributions + reinvesting them) | 19.56 pts |
