Synchrony Financial has mapped out a public offering of $547.9 million in notes backed by credit card receivables, in the latest of 23 series it has outstanding through the Synchrony Credit Card Master Trust.
The Series 2016-1 offering comprises four classes of notes, topped by a $500 million, five-year Class A tranche that has a 27% credit enhancement and has been granted an expected ‘AAA’ rating by Fitch Ratings and a provisional 'AAA' rating from Moody's Investors Service. The $47.9 million Class B stack has a preliminary Fitch ‘AA’ rating and Moody's 'Aa2' rating, as well as a 20% CE.
Synchrony Financial (which carries a Fitch investment-grade corporate rating of ‘BBB-’) plans to retain the Class C ($41 million, early rating of ‘A’) and Class D ($61.6 million) notes.
Credit enhancement is on par with the previous two Synchrony deals (2015-4 and 2015-3), which were not rated by Fitch. The Class A notes’ enhancement is derived from the 22% subordination of the lower notes plus a 5% excess collateral amount.
The new deal is expected to close on March 18.
Synchrony Financial is part of Synchrony Bank, formerly known as GE Capital Retail Bank and GE Money Bank, and carries more than $15 billion in private-label/dual-brand retail and business card receivables.
A large concentration of the receivables are with co-branded cards for Lowe’s and JCPenney (38%). According to Fitch, 74.3% of the receivables are with customers with prime and near-prime FICO scores greater than 660.
The company’s total number of accounts – 20.5 million accounts as of Jan. 21 – have undergone a slight drop in average account balances ($736) and utilization rates compared to the 2015 year-end figure of $757 (the average credit limit is $3,617 per account). The net charge-off rate for the accounts on a 12-month average is 6.38%, which is nearly equal to the Fitch Credit Card Chargeoff Index average of 6.37% but far below the company’s peak 10% rate in mid-2010.
The latest delinquency rates are 1.62% for 90 days or more.
GE Capital Global Holdings is the servicer performance guarantor.
