iShares iBonds Dec 2023 Term Corporate ETF (IBDO)

The iShares iBonds Dec 2023 Term Corporate ETF was a target-maturity bond fund managed by BlackRock and listed on NYSE Arca under the ticker IBDO. It held a diversified portfolio of US dollar investment-grade corporate bonds scheduled to mature between January and mid-December of 2023. It was one of a series of iBonds corporate funds, each named for the year and month in which it was scheduled to close, alongside similar funds holding Treasury, municipal and high yield bonds.

iBonds funds were designed to behave somewhat like an individual bond. Instead of keeping a constant maturity profile, each fund had a fixed termination date and paid monthly income while its holdings ran off, then returned the remaining assets to shareholders at the end of its term. This made them popular for laddering strategies. Investors could buy several funds with different maturity years to build a ladder of income and principal returns without selecting individual bonds.

As bonds in the portfolio matured during 2023, the fund moved the proceeds into cash and Treasury bills. In October 2023 iShares confirmed the schedule for winding the fund up: the last trading day and final net asset value calculation were set for December 15, 2023, with the liquidation distribution paid on December 22, 2023. Later-dated iBonds funds continue to trade. The process is standard for the iBonds series and is spelled out in the fund prospectus from launch, so the closing did not reflect any problem with the fund.