Note 10 - Leases

6 Months Ended

Jun. 30, 2019

Notes to Financial Statements

Leases, Lessee Disclosure [Text Block]

10. Leases

Operating Leases

We lease various assets with non-cancellable lease terms that range between 1 and 99 years. Many of these leases have optional renewal periods ranging between 1 and 20 years. We define the lease term as the original lease base period plus optional renewal periods that we reasonably expect to be exercised. We do not include renewal periods exercisable more than ten years from the commencement date in the lease term as we cannot reasonably expect to exercise an option that far into the future. Some of our leases have free rent periods, tenant allowances and/or fixed or variable rent escalators. We record operating lease expense on a straight-line basis over the lease term. Operating lease expense is included in operating expenses in our statements of operations.

We lease land, buildings, transmission towers, right of way easements, and equipment through operating leases. We generally lease land for the purpose of erecting transmission towers for our broadcast operations. Our building leases consist of office space and broadcast studios. For transmission towers we do not own, we lease space for our transmission equipment on third-party towers. We lease right of ways for various purposes including ingress and egress for tower locations and guyed wire space. Our equipment leases consist of office, transmission and production equipment.

We allocate consideration paid in the contract to lease and non-lease components based upon the contract or associated invoice received if applicable. Lease components include base rent, fixed rate escalators and in-substance fixed payments associated with the leased asset. Non-lease components include common area maintenance and operating expenses associated with the leased asset. We have not elected the practical expedient to combine lease and non-lease components. As such, we only include the lease component in the calculation of right-of-use asset and lease liability. The incremental borrowing rate we use for the calculation is the rate of interest that we would have to pay to borrow on a collateralized basis over a similar term based upon our borrower risk profile.

Variable lease payments are not significant and are included in operating lease expense as a component of operating expense in our statement of operations. Variable lease payments are generally associated with usage based leases and variable payment escalators such as consumer price index increases (CPI) incurred after the date of the adoption of ASC 842. Some of our land leases require us to pay a percentage of the revenue earned from leasing space on the towers we erect on the leased land. We included the payment level of CPI and percentage rent amounts at the time of the adoption of ASC 842 in the base rent for calculating the right-of-use asset and lease liability. CPI adjustments and percentage rent amounts that differ from the amount included in ASC 842 calculation are included in variable lease payments.

We recognize leases with an initial term of 12 months or less as short-term leases. Lease payments associated with short-term leases are expensed as incurred in our operating lease expense and are not included in our calculation of right-of-use assets or lease liabilities. Short-term leases generally consist of rentals of production or broadcast equipment for short periods of time.

Our operating lease costs, including variable lease costs, for the three and six-month periods ended June 30, 2019 were $3 million and $6 million, respectively. Our short-term lease costs for the three-month period ended June 30, 2019 were not significant and for the six-month period ended June 30, 2019 were $1 million. Cash flows from operations included cash paid for operating leases of $7 million in the six-months ended June 30, 2019. Additional right of use assets recognized in the six-months ended June 30, 2019 were not material. As of June 30, 2019, the weighted average remaining term of our operating leases was 10.5 years. The weighted average discount rate used to calculate the values associated with our operating leases was 6.75%.

The maturities of operating lease liabilities as of June 30, 2019, for the remainder of 2019 and the succeeding years were as follows (in millions):

Year ending        December 31,	Operating Leases
2019	$	5
2020		10
2021		9
2022		9
2023		9
Thereafter		53
Total lease payments		95
Less: Imputed interest		(28	)
Present value of lease liabilties	$	67

We had no material capital leases as of December 31, 2018. Our aggregate minimum lease payments under operating leases as of December 31, 2018 were as follows (in millions):

Year ending         December 31,	Operating Leases
2019	$	3
2020		3
2021		3
2022		3
2023		2
Thereafter		12
Total	$	26

Our aggregate lease payments under operating leases as of December 31, 2018 are based on ASC 840 that was superseded upon the adoption of ASC 842 on January 1, 2019. Our maturities of operating lease liabilities as of June 30, 2019 was significantly higher than our aggregate lease payments under operating leases as of December 31, 2018 due primarily to our completion of the Raycom Merger on January 2, 2019.

Financing Leases

We lease certain vehicles through a financing master lease. The weighted average remaining lease term of the vehicles under this lease is 2.3 years. The interest rate for each vehicle leased is 4.25%. We recorded a right-of-use asset and lease liability of $2 million, respectively, upon the adoption of ASC 842 related to these financing leases. The right-of-use asset is recorded in other noncurrent assets in our balance sheets. The current portion of the lease liability is recorded in the balance of other accrued expenses in current liabilities and the long term portion is recorded in the balance of other liabilities in non-current liabilities in our balance sheets.

Amortization expense associated with this lease is included in amortization expense as a component of operating expense, and interest expense is included in interest expense in our statement of operations. Amortization and interest expenses were not material in the three and six-months ended June 30, 2019. Cash paid for financing leases is included in our cash flows from financing activities and cash paid for interest on financing leases is included in our cash flow from operating activities.

For the three and six-months ended June 30, 2019, cash paid for amounts included in measurement of liabilities for operating cash flows from finance leases and financing cash flows from finance leases as well as ROU assets obtained in exchange for lease liabilities were not material.