Revenue Recognition

Accounting Policies

Revenue is recognized when performance obligations under the terms of a contract with a customer are satisfied. The majority of the Company's contracts have a single performance obligation to transfer products. Accordingly, the Company recognizes revenue when title and risk of loss have been transferred to the customer, generally at the time of shipment of products. Revenue is measured as the amount of consideration the Company expects to receive in exchange for transferring products and is generally based upon a negotiated, formula, list or fixed price. The Company sells its products both directly to customers and through distributors generally under agreements with payment terms typically less than 90 days.

The Company has elected to account for shipping and handling as activities to fulfill the promise to transfer the good. As such, shipping and handling fees billed to customers in a sales transaction are recorded in Net sales and shipping and handling costs incurred are recorded in Cost of sales. The Company has elected to exclude from Net sales any value add, sales and other taxes which it collects concurrent with revenue-producing activities. These accounting policy elections are consistent with the manner in which the Company historically recorded shipping and handling fees and taxes.

The adoption of ASU 2014-09 resulted in an immaterial impact to the individual financial statement line items of the Company's unaudited interim consolidated statement of operations during the three months ended March 31, 2017.

Contract Estimates

The nature of certain of the Company's contracts gives rise to variable consideration, which may be constrained, including retrospective volume-based rebates to certain customers. The Company issues retrospective volume-based rebates to customers when they purchase a certain volume level, and the rebates are applied retroactively to prior purchases. The Company also issues prospective volume-based rebates to customers when they purchase a certain volume level, and the rebates are applied to future purchases. Prospective volume-based rebates represent a material right within the contract and therefore are considered to be separate performance obligations. For both retrospective and prospective volume-based rebates, the Company estimates the level of volumes based on anticipated purchases at the beginning of the period and records a rebate accrual for each purchase toward the requisite rebate volume. These estimated rebates are included in the transaction price of the Company's contracts with customers as a reduction to Net sales and are included in Current Other liabilities in the Consolidated Balance Sheets (Note 8). This methodology is consistent with the manner in which the Company historically estimated and recorded volume-based rebates.

The majority of the Company's revenue is derived from contracts (i) with an original expected length of one year or less and (ii) contracts for which it recognizes revenue at the amount in which it has the right to invoice as product is delivered. The Company has elected the practical expedient not to disclose the value of remaining performance obligations associated with these types of contracts. However, the Company has certain contracts that represent take-or-pay revenue arrangements in which the Company's performance obligations extend over multiple years. As of March 31, 2018, the Company had $910 million of remaining performance obligations related to take-or-pay contracts. The Company expects to recognize approximately $198 million of its remaining performance obligations as Net sales in 2018, $220 million in 2019, an additional $180 million in 2020 and the balance thereafter.

The Company has certain contracts which contain performance obligations which are immaterial in the context of the contract with the customer. The Company has elected the practical expedient not to assess whether these promised goods or services are performance obligations.

Contract Balances

Contract liabilities primarily relate to advances or deposits received from the Company's customers before revenue is recognized. These amounts are recorded as deferred revenue and are included in Noncurrent Other liabilities in the Consolidated Balance Sheets (Note 9).

The Company does not have any material contract assets as of March 31, 2018.

Disaggregated Revenue

In general, the Company's business segmentation is aligned according to the nature and economic characteristics of its products and customer relationships and provides meaningful disaggregation of each business segment's results of operations.

The Company manages its Engineered Materials business segment through its project management pipeline, which is comprised of a broad range of projects which are solutions-based and are tailored to each customers' unique needs. Projects are identified and selected based on success rate and may involve a number of different polymers per project for use in multiple end-use applications. Therefore, the Company is agnostic toward products and end-use markets for the Engineered Materials business segment.

Within the Acetate Tow business segment, the Company's primary product is acetate tow, which is managed through contracts with a few major tobacco companies and accounts for a significant amount of filters used in cigarette production worldwide.

The Company manages its Industrial Specialties and Acetyl Intermediates business segments by leveraging its ability to sell chemicals upstream to end-use markets or downstream to its emulsion polymers business (within its Industrial Specialties segment). Decisions to sell upstream and geographically or downstream and along the acetyl chain are based on market demand, trade flows and maximizing the value of its chemicals. Therefore, the Company's strategic focus is on executing within this integrated chain model and less on driving product-specific revenue.

Further disaggregation of Net sales by business segment and geographic destination is as follows:



	Three Months Ended March 31,
	2018
	(In $ millions)
Engineered Materials
North America	179
Europe and Africa	337
Asia-Pacific	132
South America	17
Total	665

Acetate Tow
North America	35
Europe and Africa	70
Asia-Pacific	51
South America	12
Total	168

Industrial Specialties
North America	88
Europe and Africa	136
Asia-Pacific	44
South America	4
Total⁽¹⁾	272

Acetyl Intermediates
North America	202
Europe and Africa	181
Asia-Pacific	334
South America	29
Total⁽²⁾	746

______________________________


⁽¹⁾	Excludes intersegment sales of $2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018.


⁽²⁾	Excludes intersegment sales of $125 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018.