Are only brownfield investments included in the universe?
Answer
No. The companies included in the Index Universe are considered from their 'investment start date'.
However, fully-fledged cash flow forecasting can only be done once firms have entered their operating phase and three to four years of revenues and cash flow data become available. Once this is the case, a company can be priced back to its investment start date (including any impact of risk factors during the greenfield stage) and included in the universe. Thus, whilst brownfield assets represent a majority of our dataset on a month-to-month basis, the data does take into account an asset's initial startup period (i.e. when it would be considered a greenfield asset).
Things to consider
The Scientific Infra & Private Assets index universe includes greenfield investments as and when they enter the universe. This is partly determined by policy initiatives to open infrastructure investment to private finance, develop public-private partnership programs, etc. Certain thematic indices defined by investment 'age' allow controlling for the presence of greenfield investment in the index.