The credit quality of Ally Financial’s next securitization of nonprime auto loans is notably higher than of its prior deal, completed in March.
But ratings agencies are divided on how much the improvements will impact deal's long-term performance.
S&P Global Ratings sees cumulative net losses for the $731.23 million Capital Auto Receivables Asset Trust (CARAT) 2018-2, in the range of 2.9%-3.1%; that is more than 100 basis points lower than the 4%-4.2% range S&P has for the CARAT 2018-1 transaction.
Moody’s Investors Service has also reduced its expectations for net losses, albeit from a higher level, to 4.25% for CARAT 2018-2 from 5% range for the 2018-1 deal. The 2018-1 deal had an original 4% loss projection from Moody’s, but was moved up in June 2018 due to rising loss levels in recent CARAT deals.
Moody’s analysts are unconvinced that the extended seasoning of the loans (around 34 months) along with higher FICO scores (649 to 644) will translate into an above-average performance for the pool, given the extended terms on the 62,933 contracts in the pool.
“We expect that losses will be slightly lower for more seasoned loans, which is a credit positive for this transaction,” Moody’s report stated. “However, losses for recent CARAT transactions have been performing worse than our initial expectations and this is taken into account for our assumptions.”
Loss projections for outstanding CARAT transactions are 3.75%-5%, Moody’s reported.
The heightened seasoning is the result of a pool that excludes 2018 originations, and instead includes a mix of older performing loans that Ally’s non-bank entity originated from 2015-2017.
Since 2015 under chief executive Jeffrey Brown, Ally (formerly GMAC) has been
Ally Bank’s predominantly prime originations are securitized through the Ally Auto Receivables Trust platform, which has issued more than $3 billion in asset-backed securities in 2018.
The collateral’s weighted average seasoning of 34 months is more than double that of Ally’s earlier deal this year (14.8 months) and the previous highest average age of 15.27 months of any CARAT deal since 2014.
Because of the age of the loans, the average principal balance is only $11,917 compared to 16,061 in CARAT 2018-1.
The initial credit enhancement level of 15.25% remains unchanged.
According to a statement from Ally, the pool may include loans from previously called transactions, similar to prior Ally deals.
CARAT 2018-1 will issue three tranches of senior notes and three subordinate classes of notes. The senior term notes are a $256 million Class A-2 and $131.7 million in Class A-3 bonds with preliminary triple-A ratings from both S&P and Moody’s.
A $252 million money-market tranche has an early A-1+ rating from S&P and P-1 from Moody’s.
The double-A rated Class B notes are sized at $25.12 million and the Class C notes totaling $39.4 million are rated A.
Ally’s trust is also printing $27.7 million of Class D notes, which are unrated and not being sold to investors.
