Repayments of Debt

Category

Cash Flow

Units

Currency

US-GAAP elements

RepaymentsOfDebtRepaymentsOfDebtAndCapitalLeaseObligations

Reference

ASC 230, Statement of Cash Flows (financing activities)

Source

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

Repayments of debt is the total cash a company paid during a period to reduce the principal of its borrowings, both short-term and long-term. It includes scheduled maturities, early redemptions and tender offers for bonds, and payments on term loans and credit lines. It is a cash outflow in the financing section of the cash flow statement.

It covers principal only. Interest paid on the same debt is an operating outflow under US GAAP.

ASC 230 classifies repayments of amounts borrowed as financing activities and generally requires them to be shown separately from new borrowings. The XBRL element RepaymentsOfDebt represents repayment of aggregate short-term and long-term debt and specifically excludes lease obligations. Companies that combine debt and lease principal on one line use RepaymentsOfDebtAndCapitalLeaseObligations; the element name still says "capital lease," the term used before ASC 842 renamed them finance leases. Many companies report long-term and short-term repayments separately, so the total may need to be built from those lines.

A few related payments are classified here or nearby. When a company retires debt early, any prepayment premium or extinguishment cost is also a financing outflow, often shown on its own line. The portion of a payment on a zero-coupon or deeply discounted bond that represents accreted interest is treated as an operating outflow, not a repayment of principal. Debt extinguished without cash, for example by converting notes into shares or exchanging one bond for another, is a noncash transaction that does not appear here.

This line is most informative next to cash from debt. A company that repays more than it borrows is deleveraging; one that borrows and repays similar amounts is refinancing. Analysts also compare repayments with operating and free cash flow to see whether debt reduction is funded by the business or by asset sales or new equity.