Decrease in Long-Term Investments

Category

Cash Flow

Units

Currency

US-GAAP elements

ProceedsFromSaleMaturityAndCollectionOfLongtermInvestmentsProceedsFromSaleOfLongtermInvestmentsProceedsFromSaleMaturityAndCollectionsOfInvestments

Reference

ASC 230, Statement of Cash Flows (investing activities); ASC 320 and ASC 321

Source

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

Decrease in long-term investments is the cash a company received during a period when longer-term investments were sold, matured, were called or prepaid by the issuer, or were otherwise collected. Typical sources are bonds and notes reaching maturity, sales of equity stakes, and repayments on investment-type loans. It is an inflow in the investing section of the cash flow statement.

It reflects the full cash received, including any gain or loss relative to what the company paid.

ASC 230 classifies cash received from selling or collecting debt and equity instruments of other entities as investing inflows, reported separately from purchases. In XBRL, companies use ProceedsFromSaleMaturityAndCollectionOfLongtermInvestments for the broad long-term figure, ProceedsFromSaleOfLongtermInvestments when sales are shown apart from maturities, and ProceedsFromSaleMaturityAndCollectionsOfInvestments when all investment proceeds are combined regardless of term. Many companies present separate lines for maturities and for sales because the two say different things: maturities are passive, while sales are active decisions.

Any realized gain or loss on a sale is recorded in net income and then reversed out of the operating section, so the full proceeds are counted only here. Interest and dividends earned on the investments are operating inflows, not part of this line. Proceeds from selling equity-method investments and from divesting businesses are reported separately. As with purchases, the long-term versus short-term split varies, and many companies combine all marketable securities into one pair of lines.

A large inflow here usually means the company is turning investments back into cash, often to fund an acquisition, a buyback, or a debt maturity, or to rebalance its portfolio. Taken alone it is rarely a sign of stress for a cash-rich company. For a company with weak operating cash flow, however, steady liquidation of investments can indicate that it is funding operations from its reserves, which is worth checking against the operating section.