Goodwill, Customer Relationships and Other Intangible Assets

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2025

Goodwill and Intangible Assets Disclosure [Abstract]

Goodwill, Customer Relationships and Other Intangible Assets

Note 2—Goodwill, Customer Relationships and Other Intangible Assets

Goodwill, customer relationships and other intangible assets consisted of the following:

	March 31, 2025		December 31, 2024
	(Dollars in millions)
Goodwill	$	1,964	1,964
Indefinite-lived intangible assets	$	—	9
Other intangible assets subject to amortization:
Customer relationships, less accumulated amortization of $4,499 and $4,504(1)	3,048		3,196
Capitalized software, less accumulated amortization of $3,776 and $4,067(1)	1,544		1,529
Patents and other, less accumulated amortization of $89 and $86	68		72
Total other intangible assets, net	$	4,660	4,806

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(1)    Certain customer relationships with a gross carrying value of $161 million and capitalized software with a gross carrying value of $211 million became fully amortized during 2024 and were retired during the first quarter of 2025.

As of March 31, 2025 and December 31, 2024, the gross carrying amount of goodwill, customer relationships, indefinite-lived, and other intangible assets was $15.0 billion and $15.4 billion, respectively.

Our goodwill was derived from numerous acquisitions where the purchase price exceeded the fair value of the net assets acquired.

We are required to assess our goodwill and other indefinite-lived intangible assets for impairment annually, or, under certain circumstances, more frequently, such as when events or changes in circumstances indicate there may be impairment. We are required to write down the value of goodwill only when our assessment determines the carrying value of equity of any of our reporting units exceeds its fair value. Our annual impairment assessment date for goodwill is October 31, at which date we assess our reporting units.

We report our results within two segments: Business and Mass Markets. See Note 9—Segment Information for more information on these segments. We assigned no goodwill to our Business segment as of either March 31, 2025 or December 31, 2024. We assigned approximately $2.0 billion of goodwill to our Mass Markets segment as of both March 31, 2025 and December 31, 2024. Total goodwill as of both March 31, 2025 and December 31, 2024 was net of accumulated impairment losses of $21.7 billion.

As of March 31, 2025, we had three reporting units, which are (i) Mass Markets, (ii) North American Business ("NA Business"), and (iii) Asia Pacific region ("APAC"). Our reporting units are not discrete legal entities with discrete full financial statements. Our assets and liabilities are deployed in, and relate to the operations of, multiple reporting units. When we assess goodwill for impairment, we compare the estimated fair value of each reporting unit's equity to the carrying value of equity that we assign to the reporting unit. If the estimated fair value of the reporting unit is greater than the carrying value, we conclude that no impairment exists. If the estimated fair value of the reporting unit is less than the carrying value, we record a non-cash impairment charge equal to the excess amount. Depending on the facts and circumstances, we typically estimate the fair value of our reporting units by considering either or both of (i) a discounted cash flow method, which is based on the present value of projected cash flows over a discrete projection period and a terminal value, which is based on the expected normalized cash flows of the reporting units following the discrete projection period, and (ii) a market approach, which includes the use of market multiples of publicly-traded companies whose services are comparable to ours.

Total amortization expense for finite-lived intangible assets for the three months ended March 31, 2025 and 2024 totaled $252 million and $272 million, respectively.