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Note 9 - Leases

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2024

9.	Leases

Operating Leases. We lease various assets with non-cancellable lease terms that range between one and 99 years. Many of these leases have optional renewal periods ranging between one and 20 years. We define the lease term as the original lease base period plus optional renewal periods that we reasonably expect to exercise. We do not include renewal periods exercisable more than 10 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 consolidated 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 (“ROU”) asset and lease liability. The incremental borrowing rate we use for the calculation is the rate of interest that we would pay to borrow on a collateralized basis over a similar term based upon our borrower risk profile.

Variable lease payments are not material and are included in operating lease expense as a component of operating expenses in our consolidated statement of operations. Variable lease payments are generally associated with usage-based leases and variable payment escalators, such as consumer price index (“CPI”) increases. 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 in the base rent for calculating the ROU asset and lease liability. CPI adjustments and percentage rent amounts that differ from the amount included in ROU asset and liability calculations are included in variable lease payments.

We recognize leases with an initial term of 12 months or less as short-term leases and generally consist of rentals of production or broadcast equipment for short periods of time. Lease payments associated with short-term leases are expensed as incurred.

As of December 31, 2024, the weighted average remaining term of our operating leases was nine years. The weighted average discount rate used to calculate the values associated with our operating leases was 6.7%. The table below describes the nature of lease expense and classification of operating lease expense recognized in the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023 and 2022, respectively (in millions):

	Year Ended December 31,
	2024		2023		2022
Operating lease expense:
Operating lease expense	$	16	$	18	$	17
Short-term lease expense		5		5		3
Total operating lease expense	$	21	$	23	$	20

The following table presents the maturities of operating lease liabilities were as follows (in millions):

Year:
2025	$	15
2026		13
2027		11
2028		8
2029		8
Thereafter		43
Total lease payments		98
Less: Imputed interest		(26	)
Present value of lease liabilities	$	72

As a Lessor. We lease or sublease our owned or leased production facilities, land, towers and office space through operating leases with third parties. Payments received associated with these leases consist of fixed and variable payments. Fixed payments are received for the rental of space including fixed rate rent escalations over the applicable term of the lease agreements. Variable payments are received for short-term rental of space, variable rent escalations and reimbursement of operating costs related to the asset leased or subleased.

We recognize revenue from fixed payments on a straight-line basis over the applicable term of the lease agreements, whose lives range between one and 43 years. The excess of straight-line revenue recognized over the fixed payments received is recorded as deferred rent receivable in other assets on our condensed consolidated balance sheets. The deferred rent receivable balance was $9 million and $6 million as of December 31, 2024 and 2023, respectively. We recognize revenue from variable payments each period as earned.

Cash flow activities related to our lease activities for assets we lease to third parties are included in other assets and accounts receivable as presented in net cash provided by operating activities in our consolidated statement of cash flows.

The following table describes the nature of our lease revenue and classification of operating lease revenue recognized in the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023 and 2022, respectively (in millions):

	Year Ended December 31,
	2024		2023		2022
Operating lease revenue:
Fixed lease revenue	$	22	$	8	$	1
Variable lease revenue		15		15		14
Total operating lease revenue	$	37	$	23	$	15

The following table presents our future minimum rental receipts for non-cancelable leases and subleases as of December 31, 2024 (in millions):

Year:
2025	$	25
2026		24
2027		23
2028		23
2029		23
Thereafter		226
Total lease receipts		344