ORGANIZATION AND BASIS OF PRESENTATION (Notes)

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2019

Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]

The terms “we,” “our,” “ours,” “us”, "Covanta" and “Company” refer to Covanta Holding Corporation and its subsidiaries; the term “Covanta Energy” refers to our subsidiary Covanta Energy, LLC and its subsidiaries.

Organization

Covanta is one of the world’s largest owners and operators of infrastructure for the conversion of waste to energy (known as “energy-from-waste” or “EfW”), and also owns and operates related waste transport, processing and disposal assets. EfW serves as both a sustainable waste management solution that is environmentally superior to landfilling and as a source of clean energy that reduces overall greenhouse gas emissions and is considered renewable under the laws of many states and under federal law. Our facilities are critical infrastructure assets that allow our customers, which are principally municipal entities, to provide an essential public service.

Our EfW facilities earn revenue from both the disposal of waste and the generation of electricity and/or steam as well as from the sale of metal recovered during the EfW process. We process approximately 21 million tons of solid waste annually. We operate and/or have ownership positions in 41 energy-from-waste facilities, which are primarily located in North America and Ireland. In total, these assets produce approximately 10 million megawatt hours (“MWh”) of baseload electricity annually. We also operate a waste management infrastructure that is complementary to our core EfW business.

In addition, we offer a variety of sustainable waste management solutions in response to customer demand, including industrial, consumer products and healthcare waste handling, treatment and assured destruction, industrial wastewater treatment and disposal, product depackaging and recycling, on-site cleaning services, and transportation services. Together with our processing of non-hazardous "profiled waste" for purposes of assured destruction or sustainability goals in our EfW facilities, we offer these services under our Covanta Environmental Solutions brand.

Basis of Presentation

The accompanying unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared in accordance with United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”) and with the instructions to Form 10-Q and Article 10 of Regulation S-X. Accordingly, they do not include all information and notes thereto required by GAAP for complete consolidated financial statements. In the opinion of management, all adjustments considered necessary for fair presentation have been included in our condensed consolidated financial statements. All intercompany accounts and transactions have been eliminated. Operating results for the interim period are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for the year ending December 31, 2019. The condensed consolidated balance sheet at December 31, 2018, was derived from audited annual consolidated financial statements, but does not contain all of the notes thereto from the annual consolidated financial statements. This Form 10-Q should be read in conjunction with the Audited Consolidated Financial Statements and accompanying Notes in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018 (“Form 10-K”).

Accounting Pronouncements Recently Adopted

In February 2018, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) issued Accounting Standards Update (“ASU”) No. 2018-02 Income Statement—Reporting Comprehensive Income (Topic 220): Reclassification of Certain Tax Effects from Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income. The amendments in this update allow a reclassification from accumulated other comprehensive income ("AOCI") to retained earnings for adjustments to the tax effect of items in AOCI, that were originally recognized in other comprehensive income, related to the new statutory rate prescribed in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted on December 22, 2017, which reduced the US federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. The amendments in this update should be applied either in the period of adoption or retrospectively to each period (or periods) in which the effect of the change in the US federal corporate income tax rate in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is recognized. Effective January 1, 2019, we adopted this standard and recorded a reclassification of AOCI to accumulated deficit totaling $2 million.

In February 2016, the FASB issued ASU 2016-02 Leases (Topic 842) which amended guidance for lease arrangements to increase transparency and comparability by providing additional information to users of financial statements regarding an entity's leasing activities. Subsequent to the issuance of Topic 842, the FASB clarified the guidance through several ASUs; hereinafter the collection of lease guidance is referred to as Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC") 842. The revised guidance seeks to achieve this objective by requiring reporting entities to recognize lease assets and lease liabilities on the balance sheet for substantially all lease arrangements. The standard requires a modified retrospective basis adoption.

On January 1, 2019, we adopted ASC 842 using the modified retrospective method and recognized a right of use ("ROU") asset and liability in our condensed consolidated balance sheet in the amount of $57 million and $62 million, respectively, related to our operating leases where we are the lessee. There was no effect on our operating leases as lessor. Results for the nine months ended September 30, 2019 are presented under ASC 842, while prior period amounts were not adjusted and continue to be reported in accordance with the historic accounting guidance under ASC Topic 840, Leases.

As part of the adoption, we elected the package of practical expedients permitted under the transition guidance within the new standard, which, among other things, allowed us to:


1.	Continue to apply the ASC 840 guidance, including the disclosure requirements, in the comparative periods presented in the year of adoption, the hindsight practical expedient;


2.	Continue applying our current policy for accounting for land easements that existed as of, or expired before, January 1, 2019;


3.	Not separate non-lease components from lease components and instead to account for each separate lease component and the non-lease components associated with that lease component as a single lease component. We elected to apply this practical expedient to all underlying asset classes;


4.	Not apply the recognition requirements in ASC 842 to short-term leases; and


5.	Not record a right of use asset or right of use liability for leases with an asset or liability balance that would be considered immaterial.

Refer to Note 12. Leases for additional disclosures required by ASC 842.