Retirement Plans

6 Months Ended

Jun. 30, 2025

Retirement Plans [Abstract]

Retirement Plans

(16) Retirement Plans:

Frontier recognizes actuarial gains (losses) for our pension and postretirement plans in the period they occur. The components of net periodic benefit cost other than the service cost component for our plans as well as any actuarial gains or losses are included in “Investment and other income (loss)” on the consolidated statements of operations.

The following tables provide the components of total pension benefit cost:

		Pension Benefits
	For the three months ended June 30,				For the six months ended ‎June 30,
($ in millions)	2025		2024		2025		2024
Components of total pension benefit cost
Service cost	$	11	$	11	$	22	$	23
Interest cost on projected benefit obligation		32		33		64		63
Expected return on plan assets		(38)		(42)		(76)		(84)
Pension remeasurement gain		-		72		(44)		(2)
Net periodic pension (benefit) costs		5		74		(34)		-
Pension special termination benefit enhancements		-		4		-		10
Total pension (benefit) cost	$	5	$	78	$	(34)	$	10

The components of net periodic benefit cost other than the service cost component are included in “Investment and other income” on the consolidated statements of operations.

The value of our pension plan assets increased $99 million from $2,328 million at December 31, 2024 to $2,427 million at June 30, 2025. This increase primarily resulted from changes in the market value of investments of $119 million, net of plan expenses, and contributions of $62 million, offset by benefit payments to participants of $82 million.

As a result of special termination benefit enhancements related to a voluntary separation plan, Frontier remeasured its pension plan obligations, resulting in a remeasurement gain of $44 million for the six months ended June 30, 2025.

The pension plan contains provisions that provide certain employees with the option of receiving a lump sum payment upon retirement. Frontier’s accounting policy is to record these payments as a settlement only if, in the aggregate, they exceed the sum of the annual service and interest costs for the Pension Plan’s net periodic pension benefit cost.

In the first half of 2025, the Company recognized a minimal charge to reflect the cost of pension special termination benefit enhancements related to a voluntary separation plan, compared to a charge of $10 million as of June 30, 2024.

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The following table provides the components of total postretirement benefit cost:

		Postretirement
	For the three months ended June 30,				For the six months ended ‎June 30,
($ in millions)	2025		2024		2025		2024
Components of net periodic postretirement benefit cost
Service cost	$	1	$	2	$	2	$	3
Interest cost on projected benefit obligation		7		8		14		15
Amortization of prior service credit gain recognized		(6)		(7)		(12)		(13)
OPEB remeasurement (gain) loss		-		(18)		8		(27)
Total periodic postretirement (benefit) cost	$	2	$	(15)	$	12	$	(22)

As a result of special termination benefit enhancements related to a voluntary separation plan, Frontier remeasured its postretirement benefit plan, resulting in a remeasurement loss of $0 million and $8 million for the three and six months ended June 30, 2025.

As a result of special termination benefit enhancements related to a voluntary separation plan, Frontier remeasured its postretirement benefit plan, resulting in a remeasurement gain of $18 million and $27 million for the three and six months ended June 30, 2024, respectively.

We capitalized $8 million and $8 million of pension and OPEB expense for the six months ended June 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively, into the cost of our capital expenditures, as the costs relate to our engineering and plant construction activities.