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Question: How is the auto ABS market doing post-strike?

Nicholas Tripodes: The auto ABS market is still very healthy this year. Actually, we've seen the most issuance ever at auto ABS. Even with a UAW strike, which temporarily shut down some factories across the big three U.S. manufacturers, it's still a very healthy environment. The biggest impact from the UAW strike is it's been a big win for the auto workers union. We saw one of the benefits of the strike is the UAW will see a 25% increase in wages over the next four years. We're also going to see increased retirement benefits and even some current retired employees and their spouses are going to be receiving payments. So the net effect of this strike is really higher prices because of two reasons. One is the wage increases have to be layered into the cost of vehicles, and also inflation is also causing higher cost of goods sold, as well. So it's estimated that the overall impact of the strike could cause vehicles to go up 850 dollars to 900 dollars per vehicle. So overall, that's going to cause vehicles to continue to be very expensive. Borrowers who are buying vehicles or leasing vehicles are going to have to pay more for these vehicles, probably put less money in terms of down payments, and the cost of financing will be factored into, like I said, higher lease vehicles, higher loan vehicle prices. So I think the asset backed securitization market will continue to benefit from a lot of issuance from all these borrowers, either financing their vehicles that they're buying or they're leasing.