On this episode of Behind the Ticker, host Brad Roth, CIO of Thor Funds, sat down with Mannik Dhillon, CFA, CAIA, President of Investment Franchises and Solutions and Head of ETFs at Victory Capital, to unpack the meteoric rise of VFLO , the Victory Shares Free Cash Flow ETF. Dhillon walked through his winding path from pre-med to institutional manager research to Victory's C-suite, explaining how the firm's multi-boutique model creates room for genuine specialization instead of groupthink. That philosophy, he argued, is exactly what let Victory's solutions team spot a gap in the crowded free-cash-flow-yield space and build something better.
So what makes VFLO different? Two things, according to Dhillon: it looks forward instead of just backward by incorporating estimated free cash flow (catching inflection points like Moderna's pandemic-era cash surge that rearview-only models would've missed), and it layers in a growth filter that doesn't chase the best growers but ruthlessly cuts the worst ones to dodge classic value traps. That combo has helped VFLO do the seemingly impossible for a value fund: outperform not just value benchmarks but core and growth benchmarks too, all with zero Magnificent Seven exposure. The result is a fund that's ballooned to over $10 billion in assets in just over three years, making it one of the standout ETF launches of the decade.
Dhillon credits the fund's simplicity, a well-trained sales force, strong marketing, and cross-selling from Victory's broader lineup for turning a sound methodology into real adoption, in a strategy that doesn't stop at large-cap value. The same framework now powers SFLO (small cap), GFLW (large growth), and international siblings IFLO and GRIN , with more variations potentially on the way. By pairing the different funds, investors are able to diversify away from mega-cap concentration in the S&P 500 or Nasdaq-100 while still keeping pace in growth-led markets. It's an approach that keeps investors committed in value, even in challenging environments.
To learn more about Victory Capital, go here .
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