Assets Held for Sale (Current)

Category

Balance Sheet

Units

Currency

US-GAAP elements

AssetsOfDisposalGroupIncludingDiscontinuedOperationCurrentAssetsHeldForSaleNotPartOfDisposalGroupCurrent

Reference

ASC 360, Property, Plant, and Equipment; ASC 205-20, Discontinued Operations

Source

Reported in SEC EDGAR filings (US-GAAP XBRL taxonomy)

Assets held for sale (current) are long-lived assets, or groups of assets and related liabilities called disposal groups, that a company has decided to sell and expects to sell within one year. Once assets meet the held-for-sale criteria, they are removed from their usual captions, such as property, plant and equipment, and reported together as a single current asset line.

The line can hold an individual building or piece of equipment, or an entire business unit the company is divesting. If the business being sold qualifies as a discontinued operation, its assets are usually shown here as well.

Classification is governed by ASC 360. Assets are held for sale only when management with authority has committed to a plan to sell, the assets are available for immediate sale in their present condition, an active search for a buyer is under way, the sale is probable and expected to close within a year, and significant changes to the plan are unlikely. Held-for-sale assets are measured at the lower of their carrying amount and fair value less costs to sell, and depreciation stops. When a disposal represents a strategic shift with a major effect on results, ASC 205-20 also requires discontinued-operations reporting. In XBRL, companies tag the current balance as AssetsOfDisposalGroupIncludingDiscontinuedOperationCurrent, or AssetsHeldForSaleNotPartOfDisposalGroupCurrent for individual assets. An older element, AssetsHeldForSaleCurrent, was deprecated in 2014.

The balance is usually temporary. It appears when a sale is announced or agreed and disappears when the deal closes, so it can make year-over-year comparisons of other asset lines misleading. Liabilities of a disposal group are shown separately on the liability side rather than netted against these assets.

For analysis, this line signals that a restructuring or divestiture is in progress. It inflates current assets and the current ratio even though the company cannot spend it until the sale closes. Analysts typically exclude it from operating asset measures and look to the footnote for the expected proceeds and any write-down taken to reach fair value.