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Commitments and Contingencies
9 Months Ended
Sep. 30, 2023
Commitments and Contingencies Disclosure [Abstract]  
Commitments and Contingencies Commitments and Contingencies
2022 Credit Facility
In July 2022, Vertex and certain of its subsidiaries entered into a $500.0 million unsecured revolving facility (the “Credit Agreement”) with Bank of America, N.A., as administrative agent and the lenders referred to therein (the “Lenders”), which matures on July 1, 2027. The Credit Agreement was not drawn upon at closing and we have not drawn upon it to date. Amounts drawn pursuant to the Credit Agreement, if any, will be used for general corporate purposes. Subject to satisfaction of certain conditions, we may request that the borrowing capacity for the Credit Agreement be increased by an additional $500.0 million. Additionally, the Credit Agreement provides a sublimit of $100.0 million for letters of credit.
Any amounts borrowed under the Credit Agreement will bear interest, at our option, at either a base rate or a Secured Overnight Financing Rate (“SOFR”), in each case plus an applicable margin. Under the Credit Agreement, the applicable margins on base rate loans range from 0.000% to 0.500% and the applicable margins on SOFR loans range from 1.000% to 1.500%, in each case based on our consolidated leverage ratio (the ratio of our total consolidated funded indebtedness to our consolidated EBITDA for the most recently completed four fiscal quarter period).
Any amounts borrowed pursuant to the Credit Agreement are guaranteed by certain of our existing and future domestic subsidiaries, subject to certain exceptions.
The Credit Agreement contains customary representations and warranties and affirmative and negative covenants, including a financial covenant to maintain subject to certain limited exceptions, a consolidated leverage ratio of 3.50 to 1.00, subject to an increase to 4.00 to 1.00 following a material acquisition. As of September 30, 2023, we were in compliance with the covenants described above. The Credit Agreement also contains customary events of default. In the case of a continuing event of default, the administrative agent would be entitled to exercise various remedies, including the acceleration of amounts due under outstanding loans.
Direct costs related to the Credit Agreement are recorded over its term and were not material to our financial statements.
Guaranties and Indemnifications
As permitted under Massachusetts law, our Articles of Organization and By-laws provide that we will indemnify certain of our officers and directors for certain claims asserted against them in connection with their service as an officer or director. The maximum potential amount of future payments that we could be required to make under these indemnification provisions is unlimited. However, we have purchased directors’ and officers’ liability insurance policies that could reduce our monetary exposure and enable us to recover a portion of any future amounts paid. No indemnification claims currently are outstanding, and we believe the estimated fair value of these indemnification arrangements is minimal.
We customarily agree in the ordinary course of our business to indemnification provisions in agreements with clinical trial investigators and sites in our product development programs, sponsored research agreements with academic and not-for-profit institutions, various comparable agreements involving parties performing services for us, and our real estate leases. We
also customarily agree to certain indemnification provisions in our drug discovery, development and commercialization collaboration agreements. With respect to our clinical trials and sponsored research agreements, these indemnification provisions typically apply to any claim asserted against the investigator or the investigator’s institution relating to personal injury or property damage, violations of law or certain breaches of our contractual obligations arising out of the research or clinical testing of our compounds or product candidates. With respect to lease agreements, the indemnification provisions typically apply to claims asserted against the landlord relating to personal injury or property damage caused by us, to violations of law by us or to certain breaches of our contractual obligations. The indemnification provisions appearing in our collaboration agreements are similar to those for the other agreements discussed above, but in addition provide some limited indemnification for our collaborator in the event of third-party claims alleging infringement of intellectual property rights. In each of the cases above, the indemnification obligation generally survives the termination of the agreement for some extended period, although we believe the obligation typically has the most relevance during the contract term and for a short period of time thereafter. The maximum potential amount of future payments that we could be required to make under these provisions is generally unlimited. We have purchased insurance policies covering personal injury, property damage and general liability that reduce our exposure for indemnification and would enable us in many cases to recover all or a portion of any future amounts paid. We have never paid any material amounts to defend lawsuits or settle claims related to these indemnification provisions. Accordingly, we believe the estimated fair value of these indemnification arrangements is minimal.
Other Contingencies
We have certain contingent liabilities that arise in the ordinary course of our business activities. We accrue for such contingent liabilities when it is probable that future expenditures will be made, and such expenditures can be reasonably estimated. Other than our contingent consideration liabilities discussed in Note E, “Fair Value Measurements,” there were no material contingent liabilities accrued as of September 30, 2023 or December 31, 2022.