Harbor International Growth Fund will be liquidated

TheShadow

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/793769/000119312524200350/d637629d497.htm

497 1 d637629d497.htm INTERNATIONAL GROWTHFUND SAI SUPPLEMENT
 
111 South Wacker Drive, 34th Floor
Chicago, IL 60606-4302
harborcapital.com
Supplement to Statement of Additional Information dated March 1, 2024

August 14, 2024

Harbor Funds’ Board of Trustees has determined to liquidate and dissolve Harbor International Growth Fund (the “Fund”). The liquidation of the Fund is expected to occur on October 23, 2024 (the “Liquidation Date”). The liquidation proceeds will be distributed to any remaining shareholders of the Fund on the Liquidation Date.

Shareholders may exchange shares of the Fund for another Harbor fund, or redeem shares out of the Fund, in accordance with Harbor’s exchange and redemption policies as set forth in the Fund’s prospectus, until the Liquidation Date.

In order to ready the Fund for liquidation, the Fund’s portfolio of investments will be transitioned prior to the planned Liquidation Date to one that consists of all or substantially all cash, cash equivalents and debt securities with remaining maturities of less than one year. As a result, shareholders should no longer expect that the Fund will seek to achieve its investment objective of seeking long-term growth of capital.

Because the Fund will be liquidating, the Fund is now closed to new investors. The Fund will no longer accept additional investments from existing shareholders beginning on October 16, 2024.

chang

Interesting, Baillie Gifford managed. They haven’t done that well with VWIGX either (although the managers are different). Lots of managers with none of their own money invested (per M*).

msf

B-G's funds have been out of style for the past few years. It's not just with HAIGX and B-G's sleeve of VWIGX. M*'s automated analysis notes: "The parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio [is] 21%". See, M*'s quant analyses are not entirely useless.

HAIGX is a clone of B-G's BGCSX. 44 holdings overlap, all of which are in each fund's top 50 (M* portfolio tool). Same set of managers. And no management investment at BGCSX either.

BenWP

Harbor Funds have had some real success choosing managers, but there have been failures, too. When Marsico managed HAIGX, results were OK. Harbor International and Harbor bond were leaders in their day under Castegren and Gross, respectively. These days, Harbor offers OSEA in the international growth slot, using C Worldwide Asset Management. Seems as though Harbor has lost OEF assets, but gained some in ETFs. Unfortunately, certain of its ETFs trade such low volumes that it's hard to exit when desired. "Hotel California" and Roach Motel are apt comparisons.

Sven

Spiros “Sig” Segalas who managed Capital Appreciation fund passed away several years ago. The fund is team managed today. Still very good but no where nearly as good as it used to be. Other Harbor OEFs are so so.

Time have changed and BG’s investment style is clearly out of favor since the pandemic. Additionally, their higher EM exposure does not help.

BenWP

Good point, @sven, regarding Capital Appreciation. It appears that Segalas got some help from other Jennison Associates colleagues in the last few years of his service. These days, three of them are running the OEF while those three, plus a fourth, run the PGIM Jennison Focused Growth ETF (PJFG) and the Harbor Long-Term Growers (WINN). WINN has $500M under management, so no trading problems. Both are very aggressive sporting large positions in the Mag 7.

Sven

@BenWP, in the early days, HACAX has done well for us. These days we focus more on steady growth instead and there are more choices. Lately there has been quite a bit of turnover with Harbor subadvisors. On the international funds, there are few managers that resemble Castegren.