CenturyLink 2015 Annual Report Download - page 138

For information on our outstanding debt securities, see immediately below “Future Contractual Obligations”
and Note 3—Long-Term Debt and Credit Facilities to our consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of our
Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015.
Future Contractual Obligations
The following table summarizes our estimated future contractual obligations as of December 31, 2015:
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
2021 and
thereafter Total
(Dollars in millions)
Long-term debt(1) ........................... $1,503 1,501 251 1,160 1,032 15,082 20,529
Interest on long-term debt and capital leases(2) .... 1,294 1,195 1,155 1,129 1,061 15,634 21,468
Operating leases ............................ 301 289 268 235 209 1,075 2,377
Purchase commitments(3) ..................... 364 91 53 26 20 71 625
Post-retirement benefit obligation(4) ............ 56 73 90 87 83 872 1,261
Non-qualified pension obligations(4) ............ 55555 21 46
Unrecognized tax benefits(5) .................. ————— 48 48
Other .................................... 75757 60 91
Total future contractual obligations(6) ........... $3,530 3,159 1,829 2,647 2,417 32,863 46,445
(1) Includes current maturities and capital lease obligations, but excludes unamortized discounts, net and
unamortized debt issuance costs.
(2) Actual principal and interest paid in all years may differ due to future refinancing of outstanding debt or
issuance of new debt. Interest on our floating rate debt was calculated for all years using the rates effective
at December 31, 2015.
(3) We have various long-term, non-cancelable purchase commitments for advertising and promotion services,
including advertising and marketing at sports arenas and other venues and events. We also have service
related commitments with various vendors for data processing, technical and software support services.
Future payments under certain service contracts will vary depending on our actual usage. In the table above
we estimated payments for these service contracts based on estimates of the level of services we expect to
receive.
(4) Reflects only the portion of total obligation that is contractual in nature. See Note 6 below.
(5) Represents the amount of tax and interest we would pay for our unrecognized tax benefits. The $48 million
is composed of unrecognized tax benefits of $15 million and related estimated interest of $33 million, which
would result in future cash payments if our tax positions were not upheld. See Note 11—Income Taxes to
our consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended
December 31, 2015 for additional information. The timing of any payments for our unrecognized tax
benefits cannot be predicted with certainty; therefore, such amount is reflected in the “2021 and thereafter”
column in the above table.
(6) The table is limited to contractual obligations only and does not include:
• contingent liabilities;
• our open purchase orders as of December 31, 2015. These purchase orders are generally issued at fair
value, and are generally cancelable without penalty;
• other long-term liabilities, such as accruals for legal matters and other taxes that are not contractual
obligations by nature. We cannot determine with any degree of reliability the years in which these
liabilities might ultimately settle;
• cash funding requirements for qualified pension benefits payable to certain eligible current and future
retirees. Benefits paid by our qualified pension plan are paid through a trust. Cash funding
requirements for this trust are not included in this table as we are not able to reliably estimate required
contributions to this trust. Our funding projections are discussed further below;
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