Harbor Capital Advisors Launches Dividend Growth Leaders ETF

CHICAGO--()--Harbor Capital Advisors, Inc. (“Harbor”), today launched the Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF (GDIV), adding to its lineup of active, fully transparent ETFs. The Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund assets have been acquired by Harbor and merged into the newly established active ETF. The management of the fund and its investment strategy will remain the same. Along with ETFs, Harbor offers a curated experience of mutual funds and collective investment trusts (CITs).

“We are thrilled to extend our long-term strategic partnership with Westfield Capital Management, providing advisors and investors with another high conviction investment solution. Westfield has been adding value for our client base for over 20 years and counting. The timing could not be better, as investing in companies focused on growing their dividends with pricing power should help clients navigate this new regime of higher inflation and lower real growth, which we expect to continue,” said Kristof Gleich, Harbor Capital President & CIO. “Fully transparent actively managed ETFs have the potential to help clients meet their long-term investment goals and we will continue to build out Harbor’s ETF franchise with talented, exceptional and truly active investors like Westfield.”

“We are excited for the current investors in the Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund to benefit from much lower fees and a more tax efficient vehicle,” said Will Muggia, Westfield Capital Management President, CEO & CIO and Portfolio Manager of the Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund.

Westfield’s and Harbor’s strategic partnership dates back over 20 years with Westfield managing Harbor’s Small Cap Growth Fund since 2000 and managing a sleeve of the Harbor Disruption & Innovation Strategy since 2021.

About Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF (GDIV)
GDIV will pursue an actively managed strategy that seeks long-term growth of capital by investing in a relatively concentrated portfolio of primarily large capitalization companies with a history or prospect of paying stable or increasing dividends, as determined by the portfolio manager and investment team.

The Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF will be subadvised by Westfield and will pursue the same investment strategy that the Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund pursued since its inception in 2013. Will Muggia serves as the Portfolio Manager of the Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF. Will has over 35 years of experience investing in U.S. equities and leverages the fundamental research of an experienced and tenured investment team. The investment team’s strategy employs a bottom-up process to identify companies that meet the team’s fundamental criteria and then performs a qualitative review of each identified company to select securities for inclusion in the Fund’s portfolio.

GDIV has $148 million in assets under management as of 4/30/2022. Its total expense ratio is 0.50%.

About Harbor

Harbor offers a diverse family of cost-aware investment solutions managed by institutional-caliber firms. We source talented investment teams to manage portfolios and apply a rigorous fiduciary oversight program to monitor their performance and investment decisions. Harbor had combined assets under management of approximately $55 billion as of March 31, 2022. For more information, visit www.harborcapital.com

About Westfield

Westfield is an employee owned, SEC-registered investment adviser dedicated to providing quality investment management services to institutions and wealthy individuals. Westfield is a client-centric organization that offers a variety of domestic growth equity products across the capitalization spectrum to service our clients' diverse investment needs. Westfield strives to understand our clients' investment objectives, respect the needs of each individual client entity and offer direct access to our portfolio management team. As of March 31, 2022, Westfield had $16 billion in assets under management. Westfield’s client base is diverse, and the team has a long track record of managing assets for sub advisory sponsors, institutional clients and wealthy individuals. For more information, visit www.westfieldcapital.com

Investors should carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses of a Harbor fund before investing. To obtain a summary prospectus or prospectus for this and other information, visit harborcapital.com or call 800-422-1050. Read it carefully before investing.

Investments involve risk including the possible loss of principal. There is no guarantee the investment objective of the Fund will be achieved.

The Fund's emphasis on dividend paying stocks involves the risk that such stocks may fall out of favor with investors and under-perform the market. There is no guarantee that a company will pay or continually increase its dividend. The Fund may invest in a limited number of companies or at times may be more heavily invested in particular sectors. As a result, the Fund's performance may be more volatile, and the value of its shares may be especially sensitive to factors that specifically affect those sectors.

The Fund may invest in foreign securities which may be more volatile and less liquid due to currency fluctuation, political instability, government sanctions, social and economic risks. Foreign currencies can decline in value and can adversely affect the dollar value of the fund.

ETFs may trade at a premium or discount to their net asset value.

This information should not be considered as a recommendation to purchase or sell a particular security.

Foreside Fund Services, LLC. is the Distributor of the Harbor ETFs.

Westfield Capital Management is a third-party subadvisor to the Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF.

Note about tax-efficiency: ETFs are subject to capital gains tax and taxation of dividend income. However, ETFs are structured in such a manner that taxes are generally minimized for the holder of the ETF. An ETF manager accommodates investment inflows and outflows by creating or redeeming “creation units,” which are baskets of assets. As a result, the investor usually is not exposed to capital gains on any individual security in the underlying portfolio. However, capital gains tax may be incurred by the investor after the ETF is sold.

Contacts

MEDIA: Hedda Nadler – Hedda@mountandnadler.com
Andrew Greene – Andrew@mountandnadler.com 212-759-4440

Contacts

MEDIA: Hedda Nadler – Hedda@mountandnadler.com
Andrew Greene – Andrew@mountandnadler.com 212-759-4440