Asset Retirement Obligations

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2018

(11) Asset Retirement Obligations

Asset retirement obligations (“ARO”) consist primarily of costs to deinstall the Company’s ATMs and restore the ATM sites to their original condition, which are estimated based on current market rates. In most cases, the Company is contractually required to perform this deinstallation of its owned ATMs, and in some cases, site restoration work. For each group of similar ATM type, the Company has recognized the estimated fair value of the ARO as a liability in the accompanying Consolidated Balance Sheets and capitalized that cost as part of the cost basis of the related asset. The related assets are depreciated on a straight-line basis over five years, which is the estimated average time period that an ATM is installed in a location before being deinstalled, and the related liabilities are accreted to their full value over the same period of time.

The changes in the Company’s ARO liability consisted of the following (in thousands):


Asset retirement obligations at December 31, 2017	$	69,757
Additional obligations		6,054
Accretion expense		1,407
Change in estimates		462
Payments		(12,358)
Foreign currency translation adjustments		(2,663)
Asset retirement obligations at September 30, 2018		62,659
Less: current portion of asset retirement obligations		6,954
Asset retirement obligations, excluding current portion, September 30, 2018	$	55,705

For additional information related to the Company’s ARO with respect to its fair value measurements, see Note 14. Fair Value Measurements.