New-issue supply picked up last week from the dismal week previous, pricing over $11 billion as of press time, with an additional $4.5 billion left for either late last or early this week. Returning to normal, home equity issuance accounted for the bulk of the supply, as Countrywide Home Loans Inc., Chase Manhattan Bank, Credit Suisse First Boston, Option One Mortgage and Fannie Mae all brought sizeable deals.

Supply in student loan ABS also continued at a rapid clip, as Sallie Mae brought yet another offering and Education Lending Group Inc. shopped its inaugural term securitization. Issuance of "other" assets was also bolstered by the Distribution Financial Services wholesale consumer floorplan loan-backed deal.

Auto and credit card supply was sparse, with familiar names tapping the market, taking advantage of a lack of supply in those sectors. But demand was strong for all of the auto and credit card transactions, leading to a couple upsizings.

The largest primary offering came from Sallie Mae, which offered reset notes for just the second time. The $2.2 billion 2003-4 deal, via Deutsche Bank Securities, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley came at levels wider than initially thought. Spreads for Sallie Mae 2003-4 were one to two basis points outside of price guidance, particularly at the front end of the curve, where the bulk of Sallie's $8.2 billion of year-to-date supply has priced.

The one-year A1 notes, talked flat to three-month Libor, priced at two over Libor and three-year A2s, talked in the two basis point area over three-month Libor, priced at four basis points over. But the significance of this offering lied in the five subsets of A5 rate reset notes paper. Sallie previously offered reset notes in its first deal of the year, which priced in January. The new product within its structure fits into Sallie's plan to expand is investor base into the fixed-rate world, namely into soft bullet buyers.

Education lending, a San Diego-based FFLEP lender, brought its first term ABS via Citigroup as lead manager. Although it hadn't priced as of press time the one- three- and seven-year term classes - totaling half of the $1 billion offering - were on track to price Friday at a significant pick up to Sallie Mae's deal. The three-year A2 senior class was offered at nine to 10 basis points over three-month Libor, while the seven-year A3 was seen in the 30 basis point area to Libor.

Home equities came at a rapid clip last week, with large offerings from numerous lenders and investment-bank issuance shelves. Notables included Chase, which priced $1 billion of fixed- and floating-rate CFAB 2003-2 notes via JPMorgan Securities. CSFB's HEAT shelf was in the market with $600 million of 2003-3 notes and Countrywide was in with a $2 billion 2003-3 trade, the bulk of which was backed by a Fannie Mae Guarantee. Fannie even had a $215 million 2003-W7 deal in the market via Lehman, with pricing seen late in the week.

Fleet Bank sold $788 million of FGIC-wrapped home equity line of credit-backed notes through Lehman Brothers. The single-tranche 3.35-year senior priced at 25 basis points over one-month Libor. Option One Mortgage priced $1.3 billion of supply through joint leads Banc of America Securities and RBS Greenwich Capital Markets.

In credit cards, Bank One and Chase were the only names seen last week. Both offerings, however, saw enough demand to lead to an increase in size. Bank One's BOIT 2003-A3 five-year senior deal priced at 11 basis points over one-month Libor, while Chase Credit Card Master Trust also priced its five-year seniors at 11 basis points over. Chase priced its single-A subs at 35 basis points and its triple-Bs at 130 basis points, each over one-month Libor. Additionally, The Friday before last, Bank One quickly tapped the market with a $200 million five-year single-A, which priced at 37 basis points over one-month Libor.

Distribution Financial Services, the former Deutsche Bank platform that was recently sold to GE Commercial Finance Corp. priced a pair of floating-rate deals, backed by a myriad of wholesale loans to consumer retail outlets, via Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan jointly. The floating-rate offerings saw the two-year triple-A price at seven basis points over one-month Libor and the three-year senior price at 10 basis points over. Together the trades totaled $1.75 billion, both of which were increased due to strong demand.

AmeriCredit Financial Corp. brought its first auto ABS of the year to strong demand that had oversubscription rates on some classes topping 450%. Led jointly by Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank, the offering was backed by a MBIA wrap. The strong demand from investors, which lead to three basis point tightening across the board, was a positive sign for the cash-strapped issuer. This was the second liquidity injection for AmeriCredit, which closed a $1 billion whole loan sales facility last month, via Deutsche Bank.

Copyright 2003 Thomson Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.