VTEB Vanguard Tax-Exempt Bond ETF

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Vanguard ETFs as a share class: Vanguard ETFs® (exchange-traded funds) are a class of shares listed for trading on an exchange. The shares are available only through a broker, including Vanguard Brokerage Services®.

Vanguard ETF® Shares are not redeemable with the issuing fund other than in very large aggregations worth millions of dollars. Instead, investors must buy and sell Vanguard ETF Shares in the secondary market and hold those shares in a brokerage account. In doing so, the investor may incur brokerage commissions and may pay more than net asset value when buying and receive less than net asset value when selling.

Total returns: Short-term total return information is provided only as a service. Historical performance—particularly short-term performance—is no guarantee of future returns. Price, yield, and return on an actual investment will fluctuate, and you may have a gain or loss when you sell. Average annual returns include changes in price and reinvestments of dividends and capital gains. Since-inception returns for less than 1 year and year-to-date returns aren't annualized. Index performance is provided as a benchmark but isn't illustrative of any particular investment. You can't invest in an index.

Standardized returns: To see quarterly fee-adjusted returns, refer to the Price & Performance details.

Expense ratios: Expense ratios are displayed on Overview. For investments that are less than 1 fiscal year old, expense ratios are estimated.

Risk: All investing is subject to risk, including the possible loss of the money you invest. Funds that concentrate on a relatively narrow market sector face the risk of higher share-price volatility. Investments in stocks or bonds issued by non-U.S. companies are subject to risks including country/regional risk and currency risk.

Vanguard average ETF expense ratio: 0.05%. Industry average ETF expense ratio: 0.22%. All averages are asset-weighted. Industry average excludes Vanguard. Sources: Vanguard and Morningstar, Inc., as of December 31, 2023.

An investment in the fund could lose money over short or even long periods. You should expect the fund’s share price and total return to fluctuate within a wide range, like the fluctuations of the overall bond market. The fund’s performance could be hurt by:

• Interest rate risk: The chance that bond prices will decline because of rising interest rates.
• Income risk: The chance that the fund’s income will decline because of falling interest rates.
• Call risk: The chance that during periods of falling interest rates, issuers of callable bonds may call (redeem) securities with higher coupon rates or interest rates before their maturity dates. The fund would then lose any price appreciation above the bond’s call price and would be forced to reinvest the unanticipated proceeds at lower interest rates, resulting in a decline in the fund’s income. Such redemptions and subsequent reinvestments would also increase the fund’s portfolio turnover rate.
• Extension risk: The chance that during periods of rising interest rate rates, certain debt obligations will be paid off substantially more slowly than originally anticipated and the value of those securities may fall.
• Credit risk: The chance that a bond issuer will fail to pay interest or principal in a timely manner, or that negative perceptions of the issuer’s ability to make such payments will cause the price of that bond to decline. In general, credit risk is expected to be relatively low for the fund because it invests primarily in bonds that are considered to be of high quality.
• Index sampling risk: The chance that the securities selected for the fund, in the aggregate, will not provide investment performance matching that of the index. Index sampling risk for the fund should be low.
• Index-related risks: The fund is subject to risks associated with index investing, which include passive management risk, tracking error risk, and index provider risk. Passive management risk is the chance that the fund's use of an indexing strategy will negatively impact the fund's performance. Because the fund seeks to track the performance of its target index regardless of how that index is performing, the fund's performance may be lower than it would be if the fund were actively managed. Tracking error risk is the chance that the fund's performance will deviate from the performance of its target index. Tracking error risk may be heightened during times of increased market volatility or under other unusual market conditions. Index provider risk is the chance that the fund will be negatively impacted by changes or errors made by the index provider. Any gains, losses, or costs associated with or resulting from an error made by the index provider will generally be borne by the fund and, as a result, the fund's shareholders.
• Liquidity risk: The chance that the fund may not be able to sell a security in a timely manner at a desired price.
• Tax risk: The chance that all or a portion of the tax-exempt income from municipal bonds held by the fund will be declared taxable, possibly with retroactive effect, because of unfavorable changes in tax laws, adverse interpretations by the Internal Revenue Service or state or local tax authorities, or noncompliant conduct of a bond issuer.
• Regional risk: The chance that economic, political, or regulatory occurrences within a certain state may adversely affect the value of securities offered by issuers located within that state. Because the fund may invest a large portion of its assets in securities located in any one state, the fund’s performance may be hurt disproportionately by the poor performance of its investments in that area.
• Nondiversification risk: Because the fund seeks to closely track the composition of the fund's target index, from time to time, more than 25% of the fund's total assets may be invested in issuers representing more than 5% of the fund's total assets due to an index rebalance or market movement, which would result in the fund being nondiversified under the Investment Company Act of 1940. The fund’s performance may be hurt disproportionately by the poor performance of bonds issued by just a few issuers or even a single issuer, and the fund’s shares may experience significant fluctuations in value.