SCHE

About SCHE

To pursue its goal, the fund generally invests in stocks that are included in the FTSE Emerging Index†. The index is comprised of large and mid capitalization companies in emerging market countries, as defined by the index provider. The index defines the large and mid capitalization universe as approximately the top 90% of the eligible universe. As of August 31, 2023, the index was composed of 2,021 stocks in 23 emerging market countries. It is the fund’s policy that under normal circumstances it will invest at least 90% of its net assets (including, for this purpose, any borrowings for investment purposes) in these stocks, including depositary receipts representing securities of the index; such depositary receipts may be in the form of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) and European Depositary Receipts (EDRs). The fund will notify its shareholders at least 60 days before changing this policy. The fund may sell securities that are represented in the index in anticipation of their removal from the index, or buy securities that are not yet represented in the index in anticipation of their addition to the index. Under normal circumstances, the fund may invest up to 10% of its net assets in securities not included in the index. The principal types of these investments include those that the investment adviser believes will help the fund track the index, such as investments in (a) securities that are not represented in the index but the investment adviser anticipates will be added to the index or as necessary to reflect various corporate actions (such as mergers and spin-offs); (b) other investment companies; and (c) derivatives, principally futures contracts. The fund may use futures contracts and other derivatives primarily to seek returns on the fund’s otherwise uninvested cash assets to help it better track the index. The fund may also invest in cash and cash equivalents, including money market funds, and may lend its securities to minimize the difference in performance that naturally exists between an index fund and its corresponding index. The fund does not hedge its exposure to foreign currencies. Because it may not be possible or practicable to purchase all of the stocks in the index, the investment adviser seeks to track the total return of the index by using sampling techniques. Sampling techniques involve investing in a limited number of index securities which, when taken together, are expected to perform similarly to the index as a whole. These techniques are based on a variety of factors, including performance attributes, tax considerations, country weightings, capitalization, industry factors, risk factors and other characteristics. The fund generally expects that its portfolio † Index ownership — FTSE is a trademark of the London Stock Exchange Group companies (LSEG) and is used by the fund under license. The Schwab Emerging Markets Equity ETF is not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by FTSE nor LSEG and neither FTSE nor LSEG makes any representation regarding the advisability of investing in shares of the fund. Fees payable under the license are paid by the investment adviser. ​ will hold less than the total number of securities in the index, but reserves the right to hold as many securities as it believes necessary to achieve the fund’s investment objective. The fund will concentrate its investments (i.e., hold more than 25% of its total assets) in a particular industry, group of industries or sector to approximately the same extent that the index is so concentrated. The investment adviser seeks to achieve, over time, a correlation between the fund’s performance and that of the index, before fees and expenses, of 95% or better. However, there can be no guarantee that the fund will achieve a high degree of correlation with the index. A number of factors may affect the fund’s ability to achieve a high correlation with the index, including the degree to which the fund utilizes a sampling technique (or otherwise gives a different weighting to a security than the index does). The correlation between the performance of the fund and the index may also diverge due to transaction costs, asset valuations, corporate actions (such as mergers and spin-offs), timing variances, and differences between the fund’s portfolio and the index resulting from legal restrictions (such as diversification requirements) that apply to the fund but not to the index.