Westlake upsizes third straight 2018 deal in $1.1B subprime ABS pricing

Westlake Financial Services upsized and priced a $1 billion subprime auto-loan securitization Friday, reaching a year-to-date level that has more than doubled in 2017 asset-backed volume.

The new Westlake deal, originally proposed at $800 million, is the third securitization deal the Los Angeles-bases specialty lender has marketed this year, and also the third to be upsized at closing from its prospective offering.

Each of the eight tranche offerings was boosted in size by over 37%; the coupon prices on the split Class A-2 note tranches (each rated triple-A) were 2.98% on the $365.8 million fixed-rate tranche and a spread of 35 basis points over Libor for the $50 million floating-rate A-2 tranche. The yield on the Class A-2 fixed-rate notes is 3.02%; compared to 1.8% in Westlake’s second issuance of 2017 last August.

The latest deal pushes Westlake’s total volume to $3.1 billion in the year, compared to $1.5 billion in all of 2017 through a pair of deals.

According to S&P Global Ratings, the Westlake pricing brings year-to-date issuance backed by subprime auto receivables to over $19 billion, with three other deals still in the pipeline totaling nearly $1.7 billion from Flagship, Credit Acceptance Corp. and Santander Consumer USA.