Note H - Employee Benefit Plans

6 Months Ended

Jun. 30, 2023

Notes to Financial Statements

Retirement Benefits [Text Block]

Note H — Employee Benefit Plans

Prior to January 1, 1999, we provided a defined benefit pension plan for which most of our employees were eligible to participate (the “Qualified Pension Plan”).  In conjunction with significant enhancements to our 401(k) plan, we elected to freeze benefits under the Qualified Pension Plan as of December 31, 1998.

In 1994, we adopted a non-qualified, unfunded, supplemental pension plan (the “Restoration Pension Plan”) covering certain employees, which provides for incremental pension payments so that total pension payments equal those amounts that would have been payable from the principal pension plan were it not for limitations imposed by income tax regulation. The benefits under the Restoration Pension Plan were intended to provide benefits equivalent to our Qualified Pension Plan as if such plan had not been frozen. We elected to freeze benefits under the Restoration Pension Plan as of April 1, 2014.

At the end of 2020, the Board of Directors of the Company approved the division of the Qualified Pension Plan into two distinct plans, “Qualified Pension Plan I” and “Qualified Pension Plan II.”  The assets and liabilities of the Qualified Pension Plan that were attributable to certain participants in Qualified Pension Plan II were spun off and transferred into Qualified Pension Plan II effective as of the end of December 31, 2020, in accordance with Internal Revenue Code section 414 (I) and ERISA Section 4044.

In January 2023, the Board of Directors of the Company approved the termination of the Qualified Pension Plan I.  The termination process will take approximately 18 months to complete and will result in the transfer of our obligations pursuant to this pension plan to a third-party provider.  

The overfunded or underfunded status of our defined benefit post-retirement plans is recorded as an asset or liability on our balance sheets. The funded status is measured as the difference between the fair value of plan assets and the projected benefit obligation. Periodic changes in the funded status are recognized through other comprehensive income in the Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income. We currently measure the funded status of our defined benefit plans as of December 31, the date of our year-end Consolidated Balance Sheets.

Net pension cost for both plans included the following components:

	Three Months Ended June 30,						Six Months Ended June 30,
In thousands	2023			2022			2023			2022
Interest cost	$	1,772		$	1,260		$	3,544		$	2,520
Expected return on plan assets		(1,554	)		(1,468	)		(3,108	)		(2,936	)
Recognized actuarial loss		630			719			1,260			1,438
Net periodic benefit cost	$	848		$	511		$	1,696		$	1,022

Based on current estimates, we will be required to make a $1.6 million contribution to the combined qualified Pension Plan in 2023.  We made $0.6 million of such $1.6 million aggregate contribution in the six months ended June 30, 2023.

We are not required to make, and do not intend to make, any contributions to our Restoration Pension Plan in 2023 other than to the extent needed to cover benefit payments. We made benefit payments under this supplemental plan of $0.9 million in the six months ended June 30, 2023 and 2022.