Ford and Mercedes-Benz are both planning auto loan securitizations, adding a total of roughly $2.3 billion to this week’s pipeline, according to rating agency reports.
They join Nissan, which launched a $1 billion deal last week.
Also last week, Honda issued an upsized, $1.5 billion offering of auto loan ABS and Volkswagen priced $1 billion of notes backed by auto leases.
The $1.34 billion Ford Credit Auto Owner Trust 2013-C includes a $315 million money market class and three tranches with preliminary ‘AAA’ ratings from Fitch Ratings: a $414 million class A-2; the $420 million class A-3 and the $100.93 million class A-4.
In its presale report, Fitch said the 2013-C pool is relatively consistent with prior deals. The weighted average FICO score is 723 with 87.30% new vehicles, while the pool is geographically diverse with 6.9 months of seasoning, and 41.32% of the retail contracts have loan terms of more than 60 months.
The $975 million Mercedes-Benz Auto Receivables Trust (MBART) 2013-1, consists of a $278.9 million money market class and three classes with preliminary ‘AAA’ ratings from Fitch: the $305.6 million class A-2, the $275.5 million class A-3, and the $115 million class A-4.
In its presale report, Fitch said the deal’s weighted average FICO score of 766 is
“consistent with recently issued MBART transactions and combined with the strong internal credit tier distribution, indicates a strong borrower.” However, the rating agency said, the pool contains higher concentrations in used and extended term loans, which have experienced greater losses historically.
