Under the amendments to IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements the classification of certain liabilities as current or non-current may change (e.g. convertible debt). In addition, companies may need to provide new disclosures for liabilities subject to covenants.
The amendments will apply from 1 January 2024. However, companies need to consider whether their upcoming annual financial statements will need to include disclosures under IAS 8 Accounting Policies, Changes in Accounting Estimates and Errors of the possible future impacts.
We welcome the final amendments on classifying liabilities, particularly the removal of the so-called ‘hypothetical’ covenant test. Companies need to revisit their loan arrangements now to determine whether the classification of their liabilities (e.g. convertible debt) will change, and prepare to provide new disclosures about certain covenants.
Right to defer settlement must exist at reporting date and have substance
Under existing IAS 1 requirements, companies classify a liability as current when they do not have an unconditional right to defer settlement for at least 12 months after the reporting date. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has removed the requirement for a right to be unconditional and instead now requires that a right to defer settlement must exist at the reporting date and have substance.
Similar to existing requirements in IAS 1, the classification of liabilities is unaffected by management’s intentions or expectations about whether the company will exercise its right to defer settlement or will choose to settle early.
Liabilities with covenants – Classification criteria clarified and new disclosures
A company will classify a liability as non-current if it has a right to defer settlement for at least 12 months after the reporting date. This right may be subject to a company complying with conditions (covenants) specified in a loan arrangement.
After reconsidering certain aspects of the 2020 amendments1, the IASB reconfirmed that only covenants with which a company must comply on or before the reporting date affect the classification of a liability as current or non-current.
Covenants with which the company must comply after the reporting date (i.e. future covenants) do not affect a liability’s classification at that date. However, when non-current liabilities are subject to future covenants, companies will now need to disclose information to help users understand the risk that those liabilities could become repayable within 12 months after the reporting date. See Example 1.
Convertible debt may become current
The amendments also clarify how a company classifies a liability that can be settled in its own shares – e.g. convertible debt.
When a liability includes a counterparty conversion option that involves a transfer of the company’s own equity instruments, the conversion option is recognised as either equity or a liability separately from the host liability under IAS 32 Financial Instruments: Presentation. The IASB has now clarified that when a company classifies the host liability as current or non-current, it can ignore only those conversion options that are recognised as equity.
Companies may have interpreted the existing IAS 1 requirements differently when classifying convertible debt. Therefore, convertible debt may become current (see Example 2).
Effective date – Applies retrospectively from January 2024
1 Classification of Liabilities as Current or Non-current (Amendments to IAS 1), published in January 2020
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