Goodwill, Customer Relationships and Other Intangible Assets

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2024

Goodwill and Intangible Assets Disclosure [Abstract]

Goodwill, Customer Relationships and Other Intangible Assets

Goodwill, Customer Relationships and Other Intangible Assets

Goodwill, customer relationships and other intangible assets consisted of the following:

	March 31, 2024		December 31, 2023
	(Dollars in millions)
Goodwill	$	1,964	1,964
Indefinite-lived intangible assets	$	9	9
Other intangible assets subject to amortization:
Customer relationships, less accumulated amortization of $4,047 and $4,248	3,656		3,811
Capitalized software, less accumulated amortization of $3,981 and $4,045(1)	1,542		1,564
Trade names, patents and other, less accumulated amortization of $75 and $72(1)	83		86
Total other intangible assets, net	$	5,290	5,470

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(1)    Certain customer relationships with a gross carrying value of $352 million and capitalized software with a gross carrying value of $153 million became fully amortized during 2023 and were retired during the three months ended March 31, 2024.

As of March 31, 2024, the gross carrying amount of goodwill, customer relationships, indefinite-lived and other intangible assets was $15.4 billion.

Our goodwill was derived from numerous acquisitions where the purchase price exceeded the fair value of the net assets acquired. We report our results within two segments: Business and Mass Markets. See Note 10—Segment Information for more information on these segments. We assigned no goodwill to our Business segment as of March 31, 2024 and December 31, 2023. We assigned approximately $2.0 billion of goodwill to our Mass Markets segment as of both March 31, 2024 and December 31, 2023. Total goodwill as of both March 31, 2024 and December 31, 2023 was net of accumulated impairment losses of $21.7 billion.

We are required to assess our goodwill and other indefinite-lived intangible assets for impairment annually, or, under certain circumstances, more frequently, such as when events or changes in circumstances indicate there may be impairment. We are required to write down the value of goodwill only when our assessment determines the carrying value of equity of any of our reporting units exceeds its fair value. Our annual impairment assessment date for goodwill is October 31, at which date we assess our reporting units. Our annual impairment assessment date for indefinite-lived intangible assets other than goodwill is December 31.

As of March 31, 2024, we had three reporting units for goodwill impairment testing, which are (i) Mass Markets, (ii) North American Business ("NA Business") and (iii) Asia Pacific ("APAC") region. Our reporting units are not discrete legal entities with discrete full financial statements. Our assets and liabilities are employed in and relate to the operations of multiple reporting units. For each reporting unit, we compare its estimated fair value of equity to its carrying value of equity that we assign to the reporting unit. If the estimated fair value of the reporting unit is greater than the carrying value, we conclude that no impairment exists. If the estimated fair value of the reporting unit is less than the carrying value, we record a non-cash impairment charge equal to the excess amount. Depending on the facts and circumstances, we typically estimate the fair value of our reporting units by considering either or both of (i) a discounted cash flow method, which is based on the present value of projected cash flows over a discrete projection period and a terminal value, which is based on the expected normalized cash flows of the reporting units following the discrete projection period, and (ii) a market approach, which includes the use of market multiples of publicly-traded companies whose services are comparable to ours.

Total amortization expense for finite-lived intangible assets for the three months ended March 31, 2024 and 2023 totaled $272 million and $260 million, respectively.

We estimate that total amortization expense for finite-lived intangible assets for the years ending December 31, 2024 through 2028 will be as provided in the table below.

	(Dollars in millions)
2024 (remaining nine months)	$	736
2025	895
2026	841
2027	753
2028	686