Average Annual Total Returns (%)
As of September 30, 202540 Yr30 Yr20 Yr15 Yr10 Yr5 Yr3 Yr1 YrYTDQTD
FPA New Income (FPNIX)5.644.012.902.422.883.236.295.006.151.76
Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate5.714.323.232.261.84-0.454.932.886.132.03
CPI + 1003.823.563.513.714.205.574.084.062.901.14
Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate 1-3 YrN/AN/A2.431.651.921.784.714.144.161.20

Dear Shareholder:

FPA New Income Fund (the “Fund”) returned 1.76% in third quarter of 2025.

9/30/2025
Yield-to-worst14.14%
Effective Duration3.34 Years
Spread Duration2.53 Years
High Quality Exposure296%
Credit Exposure34%

During the third quarter of 2025, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell characterized the U.S. economy as having two-sided risks: despite softening in the job market, inflation remained elevated. Against this backdrop, after leaving the Fed Funds rate unchanged on July 30, the Federal Reserve eased monetary policy on September 17 with a quarter-point rate cut and described its new policy stance as “modestly restrictive.” Following that rate cut, most Federal Reserve policymakers advocated for a cautious approach to further easing and expressed concern that inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target.4 Treasury yields decreased during the quarter while spreads on investment grade and high yield debt continued to compress. Due to low spreads, we continued to focus on buying longer-duration, High Quality bonds (rated single-A or higher) we believe will enhance both the Fund’s long-term returns and short-term upside-versus-downside return profile. We seek to opportunistically invest in Credit when we believe prices adequately compensate for the risk of permanent impairment of capital and near-term mark-to-market risk; we did not generally view Credit (investments rated BBB or lower) as attractively priced during the quarter. The Fund’s Credit exposure was at 3.8% on September 30, 2025 versus 4.4% on June 30, 2025. Cash and equivalents represented 7.1% of the portfolio on September 30, 2025 versus 5.1% on June 30, 2025.

3Q 2025 Contributors & Defractors5
▲ Top contributorsNotable drivers of performance
Agency mortgage poolsPrice increase due to lower benchmark yields; interest income; and amortization of principal
CorporatesCommon stock6 price appreciation, with some additional benefit from income and price appreciation of bonds an loans
TreasuriesInterest income and price increase due to lower benchmark yields
▼ Bottom contributors
Although certain individual bonds detracted from performance during the quarter, there were no meaningful detractors at the sector level.
Portfolio Activity7


The table below shows the portfolio’s exposures as of September 30, 2025 and June 30, 2025:

9/30/20256/30/2025
Sector Exposure (% of portfolio)
ABS25.027.1
CLO3.13.5
Corporate3.64.1
Agency CMBS12.413.9
Non-Agency CMBS2.32.5
Agency RMBS22.723.1
Non-Agency RMBS6.46.7
Stripped Mortgage-backed0.30.3
U.S. Treasury17.113.7
Cash and equivalents7.15.1
Total100.0100.0
9/30/20256/30/2025
Characteristics
Yield-to-worst84.14%4.43%
Effective Duration3.34 years3.34 years
Spread Duration2.53 years2.73 years
Average Life3.75 years3.78 years

As we evaluated investment opportunities during the quarter, we looked for longer-duration bonds. Based on the yields available during the quarter, we believe longer-duration bonds will improve the long-term return potential of the portfolio and improve the portfolio’s short-term upside-versus-downside return. However, low spreads throughout fixed income markets led us to focus on higher quality bonds within the universe of longer duration investments. Low spreads increase the odds of incurring short-term drawdowns associated with an increase in spreads. We believe higher quality bonds will help mitigate drawdowns that might occur if spreads were to increase. To that end, during the quarter, in addition to extending the duration of our Treasury holdings, we bought fixed-rate, High Quality bonds with a weighted average life and duration of 5.1 years and 4.5 years, respectively. These High Quality bond investments included:

  • Treasuries
  • Agency mortgage pools
  • Utility cost recovery bonds
  • Agency collateralized mortgage obligations (CMO)
  • Non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS)
  • Asset-backed securities (ABS) backed by equipment
  • Non-agency commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS)

We sold High Quality ABS backed by recurring revenue loans with both a weighted average life and duration of 0.2 years.

We did not make any Credit investments during the quarter. Low spreads on lower-rated debt made it challenging to identify investments for the Fund that we believe offered sufficient compensation for short-term market-to-market risk and/or the possibility of a permanent impairment of capital.

Observations

Spurred by the Federal Reserve’s rate cuts during the quarter, rates declined over the past three months and are lower year -to-date:

U.S. Treasury Yield Curve
Maturity
Change in yield (bps)1Y2Y3Y5Y7Y10Y20Y30Y
Q3 2025-35-11-7-6-6-8-7-4
Year-to-date-53-63-65-64-55-42-16-5

It is a good thing that we do not try to make money by betting on the direction of interest rates. A task that we had already viewed as nearly impossible to accomplish with conviction has become significantly more difficult in recent months. As of September 30, the market was expecting an additional 25–50 bps of rate cuts by the end of 2025. However, there is uncertainty about the timing and magnitude of those cuts because the Federal Reserve is wrestling with the conflicting objectives of keeping a lid on inflation — which is still running above the Fed’s 2% target — and guiding the economy toward full employment. If the choice were between managing inflation or employment, the path of rates would still be uncertain but less so. As it stands, the Federal Reserve must choose between easing too early and risking higher inflation or easing too late (or not at all) and risking increased unemployment and weaker growth. Adding to this challenge, the Federal Reserve is also wrestling with overt political pressure on monetary policy. Finally, the federal government is shut down and not producing data. If one assumes that the government produces good quality, reliable data, then it is difficult for central bankers (and, in turn, market forecasters) to know which way interest rates should move when data are not available.

The challenges noted above highlight why we believe speculating on future prices (or yields and spreads) is a risky way to make money. We’ve described just a few of the many factors that affect interest rates. In general, there are too many factors that might affect market prices or yields, and while it may be possible to have conviction in some factors, we believe it’s impossible to have enough conviction in enough factors to make an investment rather than a bet. On the other hand, we can have much more confidence when we use current market prices to guide our absolute return– and absolute value–based investment decisions.

For example, we do not use interest rate forecasts to guide our duration decisions. Instead, we use current market yields to guide our duration choices. Specifically, we use our 100 bps duration test to help us identify whether we are compensated for duration risk on an absolute basis. That test identifies the longest-duration bonds we expect will produce at least a breakeven return over a 12-month period, assuming a bond’s yield will increase by 100 bps during that period. The chart below illustrates our duration test.

Hypothetical 12-Month U.S. Treasury Returns

The dark blue bars above show Treasury yields of various maturities on September 30, 2025. The green bars show the results of our duration test and represent the potential short-term downside return for these bonds in a rising interest rate environment. For example, the 5-year Treasury purchased at a 3.74% yield was expected to return 0.14% over twelve months if its yield increased by 100 bps from 3.74% to 4.74% during that time. Because the expected short-term downside return was positive, the 5-year Treasury was a candidate for our portfolio. The 7-year Treasury was not a candidate for our portfolio at that time because it produced an expected short-term loss. During the quarter, all things being equal, we sought investments with a duration that approximated that of the 5-year Treasury.

There are a number of reasons rates might increase, but there are also a number of reasons they might decrease. The light blue bars on the chart above indicate the short-term upside return potential over twelve months if rates decreased by 100 bps. In the example above, the 5-year Treasury offered a potential 12-month total return of 7.51%.

Despite the decrease in Treasury yields over the past few months and year-to-date, yields are still at levels that were last seen over 15 years ago:

Treasury Yield

We believe the longer-duration bonds identified by our duration test this quarter offer an attractive combination of some short-term downside protection⁹ against rising interest rates coupled with meaningful short-term upside potential if interest rates decline – a particularly compelling combination given the uncertainty around the future path of economic growth, inflation, and monetary policy. From another perspective, we believe these longer duration bonds offer much of the upside available in longer-duration indices like the Aggregate Bond Index with a smaller potential drawdown.

For the past several months, we have had to navigate a market with very low spreads. The chart below shows the yield and spread on the Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index.

Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index

At 41 bps on September 30, the overall spread on the Aggregate Bond Index was near all-time lows – the zero percentile in fact. (A lower percentile indicates a more expensive market.) Part of the decrease in the Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index’s spread in recent years can be attributed to the increase in Treasury exposure within that index. However, even excluding Treasuries, spreads were very low. For example, investment grade corporate bond spreads were at 75 bps (the zero percentile) at September 30 while the index-eligible portion of the ABS, CMBS, and MBS markets were near or below the 25th percentile.

Similarly, the high yield market was historically expensive. The following chart shows the yield and spread on the Bloomberg High Yield Index and the BB component of the Bloomberg High Yield Index, excluding energy. We find the latter index to be a better directional measure of high yield prices because it removes some of the distortions caused by compositional changes in the broader index over time.

Bloomberg U.S. Corporate High Yield Index

At 297 bps, spreads on the High Yield Index ended the quarter at the third percentile while the BB component shown above ended the quarter at 192 bps or the fifth percentile.

With spreads at such low levels, we are not surprised that our bottom-up investment process led us toward higher quality bonds. Not only do low spreads put investors at risk of uncompensated losses from credit-related impairments, but low spreads also introduce greater exposure to mark-to-market losses if and when bonds re-price to higher spreads because of idiosyncratic issues or exogenous events. We don’t know what that exogenous event might be – perhaps a recession, war, lurching government policy, credit contagion, fear of endemic fraud, or a pandemic, just to name a few possibilities. What we do know is that, historically, markets priced on the assumption of perfection tend not to do well when reality ends up being imperfect.

Further, the excess return that one can expect when buying debt at low spreads is unappealing. The chart below shows the forward one-year return on the Bloomberg High Yield Index in excess of the return on similar duration Treasuries versus the spread on that high yield index at the start of each one-year period. Historically, the average excess return has been negative when the starting spread is less than 300 bps. As noted above, the spread on the Bloomberg High Yield Index ended the quarter at 297 bps.

Bloomberg U.S. Corporate High Yield Spread vs. Forward Excess Return

To mitigate our exposure to the ills of low spreads, we have shied away from investments that have less sponsorship in the market and gravitated instead toward more widely accepted investments that we believe offer better liquidity in times of trouble and that we expect will increase in spread by a smaller amount than other investments might, because debt investors often flee toward familiarity in times of stress. This positioning does not represent our making a bet on some future event. Rather, we are merely responding to the current low spread environment. If spreads were higher, we might be more willing to invest elsewhere but that is not the world we live in today.

Our relatively high-quality, longer-duration positioning is out of step with many of our peers but our decades of experience have shown us that following the crowd may be a well-trodden path, but it is not a path that we believe leads to attractive long-term risk-adjusted returns.

Thank you for your confidence and continued support.

Abhijeet Patwardhan
Portfolio Manager
October 2025