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Santander Readies Third Subprime Auto Deal from SDART

Santander Consumer USA is marketing its third subprime auto loan securitization of the year under its Santander Drive Auto Receivables Trust (SDART) program.

The Series 2015-3 offers $794.12 million asset-backed notes secured by a pool of new and used automobile, light truck, and utility vehicle loans.

The transaction consists of three senior tranches and four junior tranches, with $125 million class A-1 rated ‘F1+’ and ‘P-1’ by Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service, respectively. The money market notes are set to mature June 15, 2016. The remaining senior notes are all rated ‘AAA’/ ‘Aaa’ and consist of $236 million class A-2-a/A-2-b notes due September 17, 2018 and $99.2 million class A-3 notes due June 17, 2019.

At the subordinate level, the deal offers $106.8 million class B notes rated ‘AA’/ ‘Aa1,’ due March 16, 2020, $114.7 million class C notes rated ‘A’/ ‘Aa3,’ due January 15, 2021, and $68.4 million class D notes rated ‘BBB’/ ‘Baa2’ due May 17, 2021. There is also $44.1 million of class E notes rated ‘BB’/ ‘Ba2’ due October 17, 2022 that will be privately placed or retained by the depositor, according to Moody’s.

The class A, B, C, D, and E notes benefit from initial credit enhancement of 49.85%, 37.75%, 24.75%, 17%, and 12%, respectively.

JP Morgan Securities is the lead underwriter on the deal.

The transaction offers 46, 78 auto loans, making it the lowest number of the year thus far for the SDART series. New vehicle loans make up 37.8% of the pool, while the remaining 62.2% consists of used vehicles.

Fitch and Moodys cite the stable credit quality of the borrowers in the pool as strength of SDART 2015-3. Borrowers in the pool have a weighted average FICO score of 597, which is higher than both of the previous SDART transactions this year.

The WA loan-to-value ratio for the transaction is 110%, with a WA seasoning of 2.75 months. In its presale report, Fitch said “an LTV ratio greater than 100% could expose the trust to higher losses stemming from increased loss severity and potentially weaker recoveries.”

SDART 2015-3 is the company’s 56th transaction since 1998, and both Fitch and Moody’s cite the servicer’s experience as key strength for the deal. 

It has been a busy week for Santander Consumer USA, as the company announced on Monday that it would be resecuritizing $442 million of previously unrated notes that were issue by subprime auto loan deal from SDART deals in 2012 and 2013. The resecuritization trusts are named SDART 2015-S1 through SDART 2015-S7. (http://www.structuredfinancenews.com/ArticlePreview?client_id=structuredfinancenews_news&story_id=256703)   

Santander Consumer USA is majority owned by Santander Holdings USA, a w holly owned direct subsidiary of Banco Santander (Santander Bank). 

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