FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2024

Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities Disclosure [Abstract]

The Company uses derivative financial instruments, from time to time, to manage its exposure to market risks for changes in interest rates and foreign currencies. This strategy includes the use of interest rate swap agreements, forward-starting interest rate swap agreements, interest rate lock agreements and foreign currency forward contracts to manage its exposure to movements in interest and currency rates. The Company has established policies and procedures for risk assessment and the approval, reporting and monitoring of derivative financial instrument activities. These policies prohibit holding or issuing derivative financial instruments for speculative purposes. The Company does not enter into derivative financial instruments that contain credit-risk-related contingent features or requirements to post collateral.

Interest Rate Risk

The Company is exposed to interest rate risk on its cash and cash equivalents and its debt obligations. Interest income earned on cash and cash equivalents may fluctuate as interest rates change; however, due to their relatively short maturities, the Company does not hedge these assets or their investment cash flows and the impact of interest rate risk is not material. The Company's debt obligations consist of fixed-rate and, from time to time, variable-rate debt instruments. The Company's primary objective is to achieve the lowest overall cost of funding while managing the variability in cash outflows within an acceptable range. In order to achieve this objective, the Company has historically entered into interest rate swap agreements.

Interest rate swaps involve the periodic exchange of payments without the exchange of underlying principal or notional amounts. Net settlements between the counterparties are recognized as an adjustment to interest expense, net.

Interest Rate Derivatives – Cash Flow Hedges

From time to time, the Company has entered into various interest rate lock agreements and forward-starting interest rate swap agreements to hedge part of the Company's interest rate exposure associated with the variability in future cash flows attributable to changes in interest rates.

Interest Rate Derivatives – Fair Value Hedges

Historically, the Company has entered into various fixed-to-variable interest rate swap agreements in order to convert a portion of the Company's long-term debt into variable interest rate debt. All such fixed-to-variable interest rate swap agreements have been terminated and proceeds from the terminations have been reflected as basis adjustments to the hedged debt instruments and are being amortized as a reduction of interest expense, net over the remaining terms of such debt instruments.

As of March 31, 2024 and December 31, 2023, the following amounts were recorded on the consolidated balance sheets related to cumulative basis adjustments for fair value hedges included in the carrying amount of long-term debt:


	Hedge Accounting Basis Adjustment (a)
Balance Sheet Classification	March 31, 2024		December 31, 2023
Long-term debt	$	10	$	13

(a) As of both March 31, 2024 and December 31, 2023, the entire balance is associated with remaining unamortized hedging adjustments on discontinued relationships.

A detailed description regarding the Company's use of derivative financial instruments is contained in Note 16 to the audited consolidated financial statements in the Company's 2023 Annual Report on Form 10-K.