Prestige Financial Services Inc., a subsidiary of The Larry H. Miller Group of Companies, has secured a second pot of $150 million in financial support, a sign of growing confidence that automobile sales are improving.

Wells Fargo Securities LLC agreed last week to provide Prestige with the $150 million through a funding mechanism known as a warehouse, which is similar to a revolving line of credit.

Last September, Prestige acquired another, slightly different $150 million line of credit through JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Chicago.

With these credit infusions, which were not available to financing companies during the depths of the recession, "people who would have been declined a year ago are going to be able to get financing now. And a lot of people will get better terms than they would have gotten," said Prestige Senior Vice President Aaron Dalton.

"The market is certainly looking up," he added.

Wells Fargo Securities typically does not comment on its transactions, said bank spokesman Mark Chapman.

Although Prestige is part of The Miller Group, which includes four dozen dealerships in Utah and six other Western states, the finance company serves a much broader audience — customers of roughly 700 dealerships in 25 states.

"We have about 36,000 customers who have car loans with us … a portfolio of $410 million," Dalton said. "About 27 percent originated from Larry H. Miller dealerships. The other 73 percent are customers from dealerships outside of The Miller Group."

Financing auto purchases is a three-step process, he said.

Finance companies typically have a line of credit that covers day-to-day operations. A customer buys a car, the finance company pays the dealership and the customer repays the finance company over the term of the loan.

"We originate loans of $15 million to $20 million a month," Dalton said. Then, on a monthly basis, these car loans are transferred to a funding warehouse, which functions like a warehouse in any industry.

"You store stuff in it until you're ready to do something with it," he added. "Once the warehouse nears capacity, then we'll take all of those loans and securitize them."

Securitization is the third step of the process. It's the goal of most midsized and large consumer finance companies.

They amass auto loans in their warehouses until the loans cumulatively exceed $200 million, then sell bonds backed by the loans to big investors such as pension funds, hedge funds and insurance companies.

"There is a chasm that has to be bridged between the original line of credit and the portfolio that needs to be securitized," Dalton said.

Prestige bridged its gap with the $300 million it secured from Wells Fargo Securities and JPMorgan Chase. Together, those funds give Prestige leeway to fill its warehouse without diminishing the initial line of credit covering individual auto loans.

This latest round of financing is the fourth that Prestige has secured since the bleakest days of the Great Recession.

In December 2009, when few competitors were getting financing, Prestige completed a $141 million securitization. Dalton said that was only the second securitization in the auto industry after the recession that did not involve government bailout funds.

That success contributed to the finance company getting its $150 million last September though JPMorgan Chase. Then, in March, Prestige obtained a $222 million securitization underwritten by JPMorgan Securities.

At the time, JPMorgan Securities' Managing Director John Cho said the transaction was Prestige's first Triple A rated issuance and attracted the "broadest investor base participation to date. We see both as confirmations of the market's continued confidence in the Prestige name."

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