Pension and Post-Retirement Benefit Plans

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2019

Pension and Post-Retirement Benefit Plans

Pension and Post-Retirement Benefit Plans:

On March 10, 2017, the FASB issued ASU 2017-07, Improving the Presentation of Net Periodic Pension Cost and Net Periodic Postretirement Benefit Cost. ASU 2017-07 changes the income statement presentation of defined benefit plan expense by requiring separation between operating expense (service cost component) and non-operating expense (all other components, including interest cost, amortization of prior service cost, curtailments and settlements, etc.). The operating expense component is reported with similar compensation costs while the non-operating components are reported in Other expense (income), net in the Statement of Operations. In addition, only the service cost component is eligible for capitalization as part of an asset such as inventory or property, plant and equipment. We elected the practical expedient to use the prior year's disclosure as a basis for the retroactive adoption of the ASU. The ASU did not have a material impact on our financial results.

The components of net periodic benefit cost were as follows (in millions):



	For the Three Months Ended March 31,
	2019			2018
	Pension Benefits
Service cost	$	1.2		$	1.4
Interest cost	3.5			3.1
Expected return on plan assets	(4.7		)	(4.7		)
Recognized actuarial loss	2.0			2.3
Net periodic benefit cost	$	2.0		$	2.1

In January 2018, we reduced our estimated long-term rate of return on plan assets for U.S. pension plans from 7.5% to 6.5%. A 25 basis point decrease in the long-term rate of return will result in a $0.7 million increase in net periodic benefit cost for U.S. pension plans.