Optimum Fixed Income Fund

Key features

• The objective of Optimum Fixed Income Fund is to seek a high level of income, and it may also seek growth of capital.
• Pacific Investment Management Company, LLC (PIMCO) selects securities by developing an outlook for interest rates, currency exchange rates and the economy; analyzing credit and call risks, and utilizing other security selection techniques.
• Delaware Management Company's investment process emphasizes bottom-up, fundamental research coupled with top-down macroeconomic analysis.

The performance quoted represents past performance and does not guarantee future results. Investment return and principal value of an investment will fluctuate so that shares, when redeemed, may be worth more or less than their original cost. Current performance may be lower or higher than the performance quoted.

Total returns may reflect waivers and/or expense reimbursements by the manager and/or distributor for some or all of the periods shown. Performance would have been lower without such waivers and reimbursements.

Average annual total return

as of month-end (08/31/2026)

as of quarter-end (06/30/2026)

Returns for less than one year are not annualized.

Index performance returns do not reflect any management fees, transaction costs, or expenses. Indices are unmanaged and one cannot invest directly in an index.

Net expense ratio reflects a contractual waiver from certain fees and/or expense reimbursements from July 31, 2026 through July 30, 2027. Please see the fee table in the Fund's prospectus for more information.

Investment managers

Delaware Management Company

Janaki Rao 

Head of US Multisector

Start date on the Fund: May 2024

Years of industry experience: 33

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Janaki Rao biography

Janaki Rao 

Head of US Multisector

Janaki is Head of the US Multisector Team at Nomura Asset Management International, a role he assumed in May 2024 at Macquarie Asset Management. He joined Nomura Asset Management as part of Nomura’s acquisition of Macquarie Asset Management’s US and European public investments business in 2025. He has overall responsibility for US multisector capabilities, including the portfolios, the team, and client and business management.

Prior to Macquarie, Janaki was Director of US Multisector Fixed Income at AllianceBernstein from November 2019 to February 2023, responsible for managing multisector fixed income portfolios, including Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS) and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) portfolios. Before that, he was AllianceBernstein’s Head of Agency MBS from March 2013 to November 2019, and prior to that spent seven years at Morgan Stanley as Vice President of Agency MBS Research.

Janaki earned a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in economics from the University of Delhi, a Master of Business Administration with an emphasis in marketing from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, and a Master of Business Administration with an emphasis in finance from the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College.

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Kashif Ishaq 

Senior Portfolio Manager

Start date on the Fund: December 2025

Years of industry experience: 24

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Kashif Ishaq biography

Kashif Ishaq 

Senior Portfolio Manager

Kashif is a Senior Portfolio Manager for Fixed Income at Nomura Asset Management International, a role he assumed in September 2020 at Macquarie Asset Management. He joined Nomura Asset Management as part of Nomura’s acquisition of Macquarie Asset Management’s US and European public investments business in 2025. Kashif manages corporate bond exposures within fixed income portfolios and oversees corporate credit traders.

He began his career in 2003 as a fixed income Portfolio Analyst with Delaware Investments (which was acquired by Macquarie in 2010) on the Insurance Portfolio Management Team and was later promoted to Investment Grade Trader. Before that, Kashif had participated in Lincoln Financial Group’s Rotational Professional Development Program.

He earned a Bachelor of Science in corporate finance and accounting from Bentley College.

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Mansur Rasul 

Head of Emerging Markets Debt

Start date on the Fund: December 2025

Years of industry experience: 24

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Mansur Rasul biography

Mansur Rasul 

Head of Emerging Markets Debt

Mansur is Head of Emerging Markets Debt at Nomura Asset Management International, a role he assumed in December 2025. He joined Nomura Asset Management as part of Nomura’s acquisition of Macquarie Asset Management’s US and European public investments business in 2025.

Previously, he was a Senior Portfolio Manager on the Emerging Markets Debt Team at Macquarie Asset Management since July 2016. Prior to his role managing emerging markets credit portfolios, he was responsible for emerging markets trading. Before joining Macquarie in 2012, he worked at ING Financial Markets, where he was responsible for emerging markets credit trading and structuring. Prior to that, he worked for Daiwa Capital Markets America as Director of the firm’s fixed income syndicate, responsible for the placement of all fixed income products to US-based accounts. He also worked with Merrill Lynch as an associate responsible for Asian credit trading and worked at Delaware Investments as an Analyst.

Mansur earned a Bachelor of Science in economics with a minor in political science from Northwestern University.

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Sub-advisors

Nomura Corporate Research and Asset Management Inc.

Pacific Investment Management Company, LLC (PIMCO)

Marc P. Seidner

CIO Non-traditional Strategies, Managing Director and Portfolio Manager

Start date on the Fund: January 2015

Mr. Seidner is CIO Non-traditional Strategies, a managing director and head of portfolio management in the New York office. He is also a generalist portfolio manager and a member of the Investment Committee. He rejoined PIMCO in November 2014 after serving as head of fixed income at GMO LLC, and previously he was a PIMCO managing director, generalist portfolio manager and member of the Investment Committee until January 2014. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2009, he was a managing director and domestic fixed income portfolio manager at Harvard Management Company. Previously, he was director of active core strategies at Standish Mellon Asset Management and a senior portfolio manager at Fidelity Management and Research. He has 31 years of investment experience and holds an undergraduate degree in economics from Boston College. He has held his Fund responsibilities since January 2015.

In addition, PIMCO has an Investment Committee, which oversees the setting of investment policy decisions, including duration positioning, yield curve management, sector rotation, credit quality and overall portfolio composition, for all PIMCO portfolios and strategies, including PIMCO's share of the Fund's assets.

The SAI provides additional information about each portfolio manager’s compensation, other accounts managed by each portfolio manager, and each portfolio manager’s ownership of Fund shares.

Mike Cudzil

Managing Director and Portfolio Manager

Start date on the fund: July 2023

Mr. Cudzil is a managing director and generalist portfolio manager based in the Newport Beach office. He is a rotating member of the PIMCO Investment Committee and co-chair of the Americas portfolio committee. As a portfolio manager across multi-sector fixed income mandates, Mr. Cudzil also serves as a senior member of the Total Return portfolio management team, co-lead of the liability-driven investment portfolio management team, and co-lead of the agency MBS portfolio management team. Mr. Cudzil is also a member of the steering committee for PIMCO Families, a resource group dedicated to supporting employees in their efforts to successfully manage career and family. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2012, he worked as a managing director and head of pass-through trading at Nomura. Mr. Cudzil previously held similar roles at Bank of America and Lehman Brothers, as well as a senior trading position at Salomon Brothers. He has 26 years of investment experience and holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Mohit Mittal

Managing Director and Portfolio Manager

Start date on the fund: July 2023

Mr. Mittal is a managing director and portfolio manager in the Newport Beach office. He manages multi-sector portfolios and is a senior member of LDI, Total Return, Dynamic Bond, and Credit portfolio management teams. He also serves as executive sponsor and steering committee member for PIMCO Multicultural. Morningstar named him winner of the 2020 U.S. Morningstar Award for Investing Excellence in the Rising Talent category. He is a member of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC), which is an advisory committee governed by federal statute that meets quarterly with the Treasury Department. Mr. Mittal also serves on the board of Orangewood Foundation. He joined PIMCO in 2007 and holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an undergraduate degree in computer science from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi, India.

The table below describes the fees and expenses that you may pay if you buy and hold shares of the Fund.

You may pay other fees, such as brokerage commissions and other fees to financial intermediaries, which are not reflected in the tables and examples below.

You may qualify for sales-charge discounts if you and your family invest, or agree to invest in the future, at least $100,000 in Optimum Funds. More information about these and other discounts is available from your financial intermediary, in the Fund’s Prospectus under the section entitled “About your account,” and in the Fund’s statement of additional information (SAI) under the section entitled “Purchasing Shares."

The chart below lists the percentage of the Fund's total assets under management that each sub-advisor manages on behalf of the Fund. The percentages include securities, cash, and any other assets managed by each sub-advisor in its sleeve of the Fund. These percentage allocations should be updated some time after 30 days following a given month end.

Total may not equal 100% due to rounding.