Santander Consumer USA is bringing its fifth subprime auto securitization of they year to the public market.
The deal, Santander Drive Auto Receivables Trust, 2013-5, will issue $1 billion of notes, according to a presale report published by Fitch Ratings.
J.P. Morgan Securities is the lead underwriter.
Fitch said the auto loans backing this latest deal are marginally weaker than Santander’s three prior transactions. “While the WA Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO) score (589) and internal loss forecasting score (LFS; 563) are relatively consistent with the prior three transactions, the 2013-5 pool has a higher concentration in the weaker LFS score buckets,” the report stated.
The deal also has higher credit enhancement of 45.80% for the class A notes, up from 43.0% in the 2013-4 and 2013-3 deals, which Fitch said compensates for the marginally weaker pool, lower excess spread and the incorporation of an unhedged, floating-rate class A-2-B notes.
Fitch has assigned a preliminary F1’ rating to the deal’s $144 million class A-1 money market tranche and an AAA’ rating to the combined $326 million class A-2-A and A-2-B notes maturing in April 2017 and the $145.88 million of A-3 notes maturing in February 2018.
Santander’s last publicly offered subprime auto deal, 2013-4, came to market in July; in August the firm tapped the 144a market.
