MUTUAL FUND JUNE 30 COMMENTARY 2021 Growth Fund Portfolio Review FUND FACTS • The fund posted positive returns of 10.37% vs. 11.93% for the Russell 1000® Growth The fund seeks to invest in companies with sustainable competitive advantages, Index, underperforming the benchmark by 1.56% net during the second quarter. Nvidia, long-term structural growth drivers, Alphabet and Facebook were the three largest contributors to fund performance. Deere, attractive cash flow returns on invested capital, and management teams Boeing and Walt Disney were the largest detractors to performance during the quarter. focused on creating long-term value for shareholders. The fund’s portfolio • Stock selection in the healthcare and information technology sectors as well as our manager also aims to invest in companies when they trade at a significant discount allocation to the communication services and energy sectors contributed positively to to the estimate of intrinsic value. relative return. Stock selection in the industrials, communication services, financials, consumer discretionary and consumer staples sectors as well as out allocation to the Strategy AUM1 $76.0 billion information technology and industrials sectors detracted from relative performance. Fund AUM $14.1 billion Share Class Y • The fund is an actively managed strategy with a long-term, private equity approach to Inception 5/16/1991 investing. Through our proprietary bottom-up research framework, we look to invest in Ticker LSGRX Benchmark Russell 1000® Growth those few high-quality businesses with sustainable competitive advantages and profitable CUSIP 543487110 growth when they trade at a significant discount to intrinsic value (our estimate of the true Portfolio worth of a business, which we define as the present value of all expected future net cash Aziz Hamzaogullari Manager flows to the company). Manager Since June 2010 1Strategy assets are comprised of Loomis Sayles Large Cap Growth style accounts. PERFORMANCE AS OF JUNE 30, 2021 (%) CLASS Y CUMULATIVE TOTAL AVERAGE ANNUALIZED RETURN TOP TEN HOLDINGS (%) RETURN Amazon.com, Inc. 6.6 3 MONTH YTD 1 YEAR 3 YEAR 5 YEAR 10 YEAR Alphabet Inc. 6.5 FUND Facebook, Inc. 6.3 10.37 13.61 36.40 23.12 21.37 17.72 NVIDIA Corporation 6.2 BENCHMARK 11.93 12.99 42.50 25.14 23.66 17.87 Visa Inc. 5.3 EXCESS RETURN -1.56 +0.62 -6.10 -2.02 -2.29 -0.15 Microsoft Corporation 4.3 Boeing Company 4.3 Performance data shown represents past performance and is no guarantee of, and not necessarily Autodesk, Inc. 4.3 indicative of, future results. Investment return and value will vary and you may have a gain or loss when Oracle Corporation 3.9 shares are sold. Current performance may be lower or higher than quoted. For most recent month-end performance, visit www.loomissayles.com. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. 3.9 Total 51.7 Performance for periods less than one year is cumulative, not annualized. Returns reflect changes in share price and reinvestment of dividends and capital gains, if any. You may not invest directly in an index. Data is based on total gross assets Additional share classes may be available for eligible investors. Performance will vary based on the share class. before any fees are paid; any cash held Gross expense ratio 0.65% (Class Y). Net expense ratio 0.65%. As of the most recent prospectus, the investment advisor is included. The portfolio is actively managed and holdings are subject to has contractually agreed to waive fees and/or reimburse expenses once the expense cap of the fund has been exceeded. change. References to specific securities This arrangement is set to expire on 1/31/2022. When an expense cap has not been exceeded, the fund may have similar or industries should not be considered a expense ratios. recommendation. Holdings may combine The Class Y inception date is 5/16/1991. Institutional. Class shares (Class Y) are available to eligible investors with a more than one security from the same issuer and related depositary receipts. minimum initial investment of $100,000 and without a sales charge. Portfolio weight calculations include accrued interest. For current holdings, please visit www.loomissayles.com. 1 One Financial Center Boston, MA 02111 www.loomissayles.com NEW PURCHASE HIGHLIGHTS Portfolio Activity • All aspects of our quality-growth-valuation investment thesis must be present for us to Vertex Pharmaceuticals make an investment. Often our research is completed well in advance of the opportunity A global biopharmaceutical company with deep expertise in to invest. We are patient investors and maintain coverage of high-quality businesses in protein and genetic science and order to take advantage of meaningful price dislocations if and when they occur. During a focus on specialty markets. The company is the leader in creating the quarter, we initiated a position in Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Vertex Pharmaceuticals is a therapies for patients suffering global biopharmaceutical company with deep expertise in protein and genetic science and from cystic fibrosis and is building a focus on specialty markets. The company is the leader in creating therapies for patients out its capabilities to address related diseases that lever its core suffering from cystic fibrosis and is building out its capabilities to address related diseases expertise. that lever its core expertise. We funded the purchase by trimming our positions in Cerner, Deere, Expeditors International and Qualcomm.2 Contributors Nvidia, Alphabet and Facebook were the three largest contributors to fund performance during the quarter. • Nvidia Corporation is the world leader in visual computing, which enables computers to produce and utilize highly realistic 3D graphic imagery and models. Founded in 1993 to develop faster and more-realistic graphics for PC-based video games, Nvidia created the first graphics processing unit (GPU), a dedicated semiconductor that employs a proprietary parallel processing architecture to perform superior graphics rendering outside of a computer’s standard central processing unit (CPU). The parallel processing capability of Nvidia’s GPUs, which contrasts with the linear processing requirement of CPUs, can accelerate computing functions performed by standard CPUs by greater than ten times. As a result, GPU technology has broad application in computing fields unrelated to graphics. Nvidia has extended its visual computing expertise beyond its legacy gaming market into innovative new and potentially larger markets, including data centers, autos, and professional visualization. In particular, the parallel processing capability is facilitating pattern recognition and machine learning functions that enable artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Today, Nvidia is the market leader in GPUs where it forms a duopoly with competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Nvidia’s legacy gaming market still accounts for almost 50% of revenues, but the company is focused on building out its GPU computing-based ecosystem and is enabling breakthroughs in new fields such as AI, autonomous driving, and virtual reality. A fund holding since the first quarter of 2019, Nvidia reported quarterly financial results that were strong and above management guidance and consensus expectations. Total revenues in the company’s gaming, data center, and professional visualization businesses all set quarterly records. However, the company indicated that a portion of sales could be attributed to cryptocurrency miners, who use the chips to accelerate the mining of cryptocurrencies. A similar phenomenon occurred at the prior peak of cryptocurrency pricing in 2018 as high prices drove elevated short-term demand for GPUs that quickly evaporated when cryptocurrency prices sharply declined, leaving elevated GPU inventories that took approximately one year to normalize. Management believes it is now better prepared to manage any short-term demand spike. The company is installing software on many new gaming GPU cards that will cause them to operate at half speed if it senses they are being used for mining. Separately, the company is launching some cryptocurrency- specific GPUs that lack display functionality but have other functionalities geared towards 2Quarter-to-date transactions as of June 30, 2021. JUNE 30, 2021 2 One Financial Center Boston, MA 02111 www.loomissayles.com crypto-mining. The company believes that if crypto volumes continue to grow, ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) chip manufacturers will enter the market, preventing Nvidia’s crypto-specific offerings from becoming too large a portion of its business. Nvidia’s involvement in cryptocurrency is not a part of our investment thesis for the company, and the market’s overreaction to the prior short-term demand spike helped create the opportunity to initiate our position. While cryptocurrency may contribute to some short term “noise” and underperformance, we believe the company is strongly positioned to benefit from secular growth in PC gaming and remains in the early stages of growth in its potentially much larger data center business in the long term. Total quarterly revenue of $5.7 billion rose 84% year over year, due in part to the recent acquisition of networking equipment provider Mellanox Technologies, which was not included in the prior-year quarterly results. Excluding the acquisition, revenue grew 64% year over year. Gaming revenue of $2.8 billion represented 49% of total sales and rose 106% year over year. The gaming industry appears to have fully recovered and demand has remained strong across all geographies and channels. Nvidia is benefitting from record sales of PCs and gaming laptops, and strong adoption of its RTX 30 graphics cards, where the company recently announced its new RTX 3060 GPU that is bringing the RTX 30 series to the mass-market gaming segment. Nvidia estimates only 15% of its installed base has adopted RTX, and we expect adoption will be strong as an increasing number of games such as Minecraft, Battlefield V, Fortnite, Call of Duty, and 30 other major games are being upgraded and launched to leverage RTX.