Leases (Notes)

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2021

Leases

We lease space for all of our Rent-A-Center Business and Mexico stores under operating leases expiring at various times through 2029. In addition, we lease space for certain support facilities under operating leases expiring at various times through 2032. Most of our store leases are five year leases and contain renewal options for additional periods ranging from three to five years at rental rates adjusted according to agreed upon formulas. We evaluate all leases to determine if it is likely that we will exercise future renewal options and in most cases we are not reasonably certain of exercise due to competing market rental rates and lack of significant penalty or business disruption incurred by not exercising the renewal options. In certain situations involving the sale of a Rent-A-Center Business corporate store to a franchisee, we enter into a lease assignment agreement with the buyer, but we remain the primary obligor under the original lease for the remaining active term. These assignments are therefore classified as subleases and the original lease is included in our operating lease right-of-use assets and operating lease liabilities in our Consolidated Balance Sheets.

We lease vehicles for all of our Rent-A-Center Business stores under operating leases with lease terms expiring twelve months after the start date of the lease. We classify these leases as short-term and have elected the short-term lease exemption for our vehicle leases, and have therefore excluded them from our operating lease right-of-use assets within our Consolidated Balance Sheets. We also lease vehicles for all of our Mexico stores which have terms expiring at various times through 2025 with rental rates adjusted periodically for inflation. Finally, we have a minimal number of equipment leases, primarily related to temporary storage containers and certain back office technology hardware assets.

For all of the leases described above, we have elected not to separate the lease and non-lease components and instead account for these as a single component. In addition, we have elected to use available practical expedients that eliminate the requirement

to reassess whether expired or existing contracts contained leases, and the requirement to reassess the lease classification for any existing leases prior to our adoption of ASU 2016-02 on January 1, 2019.

Operating lease right-of-use assets and operating lease liabilities are discounted using our incremental borrowing rate, since the implicit rate is not readily determinable. We do not currently have any financing leases.

Operating lease costs are recorded on a straight-line basis within other store expenses in our Consolidated Statements of Operations.

Total operating lease costs by expense type:


	Twelve Months Ended
(in thousands)	December 31, 2021		December 31, 2020		December 31, 2019
Operating lease cost included in other store expenses(1)(2)	$	129,217	$	140,186	$	148,314
Operating lease cost included in other charges(2)	302		1,236		9,222
Sublease receipts	(11,806)		(9,727)		(7,683)
Total operating lease charges	$	117,713	$	131,695	$	149,853

(1) Includes short-term lease costs, which are not significant.

(2) Excludes variable lease costs of $33.7 million and $34.6 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively.

Supplemental cash flow information related to leases:


	Twelve Months Ended
(in thousands)	December 31, 2021		December 31, 2020		December 31, 2019
Cash paid for amounts included in measurement of operating lease liabilities	$	107,588	$	113,243	$	120,826
Cash paid for short-term operating leases not included in operating lease liabilities	17,266		22,339		27,402
Right-of-use assets obtained in exchange for new operating lease liabilities	100,779		104,771		78,250

Weighted-average discount rate and weighted-average remaining lease term:


(in thousands)	December 31, 2021		December 31, 2020		December 31, 2019
Weighted-average discount rate(1)	6.0	%	6.8	%	7.7	%
Weighted-average remaining lease term (in years)	4		4		4

(1) January 1, 2019 incremental borrowing rate was used for leases in existence at the time of adoption of ASU 2016-02.

Reconciliation of undiscounted operating lease liabilities to the present value operating lease liabilities at December 31, 2021:


(In thousands)	Operating Leases
2022	$	106,505
2023	83,248
2024	64,693
2025	47,248
2026	23,077
Thereafter	17,266
Total undiscounted operating lease liabilities	342,037
Less: Interest	(45,502)
Total present value of operating lease liabilities	$	296,535

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and related government restrictions negatively impacting our operations, we renegotiated certain store lease agreements in the second quarter of 2020 to obtain rent relief in the near term, in order to help offset the negative financial impacts of COVID-19. Renegotiations included approximately 500 lease agreements, receiving near term rent abatements of approximately $2.3 million and rent deferrals of approximately $2.1 million. As of December 31, 2021, the vast majority of COVID rent deferrals have been repaid.