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Financial Statement Presentation
3 Months Ended
Mar. 31, 2017
Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]  
FINANCIAL STATEMENT PRESENTATION
FINANCIAL STATEMENT PRESENTATION
The prior-period condensed consolidated financial statements in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (“Form 10-Q”) have been reclassified to reflect the businesses held-for-sale and discontinued operations as discussed in Note 16—Held-for-Sale Businesses and Dispositions and Note 15—Discontinued Operations, respectively.
Consolidation In this Quarterly Report the terms “AES,” “the Company,” “us” or “we” refer to the consolidated entity including its subsidiaries and affiliates. The terms “The AES Corporation” or “the Parent Company” refer only to the publicly held holding company, The AES Corporation, excluding its subsidiaries and affiliates. Furthermore, VIEs in which the Company has a variable interest have been consolidated where the Company is the primary beneficiary. Investments in which the Company has the ability to exercise significant influence, but not control, are accounted for using the equity method of accounting. All intercompany transactions and balances have been eliminated in consolidation.
Interim Financial Presentation The accompanying unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements and footnotes have been prepared in accordance with GAAP, as contained in the FASB ASC, for interim financial information and Article 10 of Regulation S-X issued by the SEC. Accordingly, they do not include all the information and footnotes required by GAAP for annual fiscal reporting periods. In the opinion of management, the interim financial information includes all adjustments of a normal recurring nature necessary for a fair presentation of the results of operations, financial position, comprehensive income and cash flows. The results of operations for the three months ended March 31, 2017 are not necessarily indicative of results that may be expected for the year ending December 31, 2017. The accompanying condensed consolidated financial statements are unaudited and should be read in conjunction with the 2016 audited consolidated financial statements and notes thereto, which are included in the 2016 Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 27, 2017 (the “2016 Form 10-K”).
New Accounting Pronouncements The following table provides a brief description of recent accounting pronouncements that had and/or could have a material impact on the Company’s consolidated financial statements. Accounting pronouncements not listed below were assessed and determined to be either not applicable or are expected to have no material impact on the Company’s consolidated financial statements.
New Accounting Standards Adopted
ASU Number and Name
Description
Date of Adoption
Effect on the financial statements upon adoption
2016-09, Compensation — Stock Compensation (Topic 718): Improvements to Employee Share-Based Payment Accounting
The standard simplifies the following aspects of accounting for share-based payments awards: accounting for income taxes, classification of excess tax benefits on the statement of cash flows, forfeitures, statutory tax withholding requirements, classification of awards as either equity or liabilities and classification of employee taxes paid on statement of cash flows when an employer withholds shares for tax-withholding purposes.
Transition method: The recognition of excess tax benefits and tax deficiencies arising from vesting or settlement were applied retrospectively. The elimination of the requirement that excess tax benefits be realized before they are recognized was adopted on a modified retrospective basis.
January 1, 2017
The recognition of excess tax benefits in the provision for income taxes in the period when the awards vest or are settled, rather than in paid-in-capital in the period when the excess tax benefits are realized, resulted in a decrease of $31 million to deferred tax liabilities, offset by an increase to retained earnings. 
New Accounting Standards Issued But Not Yet Effective
ASU Number and Name
Description
Date of Adoption
Effect on the financial statements upon adoption
2017-08, Receivables — Nonrefundable Fees and Other Costs (Subtopic 310-20): Premium Amortization on Purchased Callable Debt Securities
This standard shortens the period of amortization of the premium on certain callable debt securities to the earliest call date.
Transition method: modified retrospective.
January 1, 2019. Early adoption is permitted.
The Company is currently evaluating the impact of adopting the standard on its consolidated financial statements.
2017-07, Compensation — Retirement Benefits (Topic 715): Improving the Presentation of Net Periodic Pension Cost and Net Periodic Postretirement Benefit Cost
This standard changes the presentation of non-service cost expense associated with defined benefit plans and updates the guidance so that only the service cost component will be eligible for capitalization.
Transition method: Prospective for presentation of non-service cost expense. Retrospective for the change in capitalization.
January 1, 2018. Early adoption is permitted.
The Company is currently evaluating the impact of adopting the standard on its consolidated financial statements and does not plan to early adopt.
2017-04, Intangibles — Goodwill and Other (Topic 350): Simplifying the Test for Goodwill Impairment
This standard simplifies the accounting for goodwill impairment by removing the requirement to calculate the implied fair value. Instead, it requires that an entity records an impairment charge based on the excess of a reporting unit's carrying amount over its fair value.
Transition method: prospective.
January 1, 2020. Early adoption is permitted as of January 1, 2017.
The Company is currently evaluating the impact of adopting the standard on its consolidated financial statements.
2017-01, Business Combinations (Topic 805): Clarifying the Definition of a Business
This standard provides guidance to assist the entities with evaluating when a set of transferred assets and activities is a business.
Transition method: prospective.
January 1, 2018. Early adoption is permitted.
The Company is currently evaluating the impact of adopting the standard on its consolidated financial statements.
2016-18, Statement of Cash Flows (Topic 230): Restricted Cash (a consensus of the FASB Emerging Issues Task Force)
This standard requires that a statement of cash flows explain the change during the period in the total of cash, cash equivalents, and amounts generally described as restricted cash or restricted cash equivalents. Therefore, amounts generally described as restricted cash and restricted cash equivalents should be included with cash and cash equivalents when reconciling the beginning-of-period and end-of-period total amounts shown on the statement of cash flows.
Transition method: retrospective.
January 1, 2018. Early adoption is permitted.
The Company is currently evaluating the impact of adopting the standard on its consolidated financial statements.
2016-16, Income Taxes (Topic 740): Intra-Entity Transfers of Assets Other Than Inventory
This standard requires that an entity recognizes the income tax consequences of an intra-entity transfer of an asset other than inventory when the transfer occurs.
Transition method: modified retrospective.
January 1, 2018. Early adoption is permitted.
The Company is currently evaluating the impact of adopting the standard on its consolidated financial statements.
2016-13, Financial Instruments — Credit Losses (Topic 326): Measurement of Credit Losses on Financial Instruments
The standard updates the impairment model for financial assets measured at amortized cost to an expected loss model rather than an incurred loss model. It also allows for the presentation of credit losses on available-for-sale debt securities as an allowance rather than a write down.
Transition method: various.
January 1, 2020. Early adoption is permitted only as of January 1, 2019.
The Company is currently evaluating the impact of adopting the standard on its consolidated financial statements.
2016-02, Leases (Topic 842)
The standard creates Topic 842, Leases, which supersedes Topic 840, Leases. It introduces a lessee model that brings substantially all leases onto the balance sheet while retaining most of the principles of the existing lessor model in U.S. GAAP and aligning many of those principles with ASC 606, Revenue from Contracts with Customers.
Transition method: modified retrospective approach with certain practical expedients.
January 1, 2019. Early adoption is permitted.
The Company is currently evaluating the impact of adopting the standard on its consolidated financial statements. The Company intends to adopt the standard as of January 1, 2019.
2014-09, 2015-14, 2016-08, 2016-10, 2016-12, 2016-20, 2017-05, Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606)
See discussion of the ASU below.
January 1, 2018. Earlier application is permitted only as of January 1, 2017.
The Company will adopt the standard on January 1, 2018; see below for the evaluation of the impact of its adoption on the consolidated financial statements.
ASU 2014-09 and its subsequent corresponding updates provides the principles an entity must apply to measure and recognize revenue. The core principle is that an entity shall recognize revenue to depict the transfer of promised goods or services to customers in an amount that reflects the consideration to which the entity expects to be entitled in exchange for those goods or services. Amendments to the standard were issued that provide further clarification of the principle and to provide certain transition expedients. The standard will replace most existing revenue recognition guidance in GAAP, including the guidance on recognizing other income upon the sale or transfer of nonfinancial assets (including in-substance real estate).
The standard requires retrospective application and allows either a full retrospective adoption in which all of the periods are presented under the new standard or a modified retrospective approach in which the cumulative effect of initially applying the guidance is recognized at the date of initial application. We are currently working toward adopting the standard using the full retrospective method. However, the Company will continue to assess this conclusion which is dependent on the final impact to the financial statements.
In 2016, the Company established a cross-functional implementation team and is in the process of evaluating changes to our business processes, systems and controls to support recognition and disclosure under the new standard. At this time, we do not expect any significant impact on our financial systems as a result of the implementation of the new revenue recognition standard.
Given the complexity and diversity of our non-regulated arrangements, the Company is assessing the standard on a contract by contract basis and has completed more than half of the total expected effort. Through this assessment, the Company has identified certain key issues that we are continuing to evaluate in order to complete our assessment of the full population of contracts and be able to assess the overall impact to the financial statements. These issues include: the application of the practical expedient for measuring progress toward satisfaction of a performance obligation, when variable quantities would be considered variable consideration versus an option to acquire additional goods and services, how to measure progress toward completion for a performance obligation that is a bundle and application of the standard to contracts that are under the scope of Service Concession Arrangements (Topic 853). We are continuing to work with various non-authoritative industry groups, and monitoring the FASB and Transition Resource Group activity, as we finalize our accounting policy on these and other industry specific interpretative issues which is expected in 2017.