Company: CF
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001324404-25-000006
Chunk: 144

Company: CF Industries Holdings, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 8
Chunk 144
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 amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the consolidated financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the consolidated financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of a critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Measurements of projected benefit obligations

As discussed in Note 13 to the consolidated financial statements, the Company’s projected benefit obligation (PBO) associated with its defined benefit pension plans established in North America and the United Kingdom was $278 million and $317 million, respectively, as of December 31, 2024. The Company’s PBO represents an actuarially determined estimate of the present value of the vested benefits to which each eligible employee is currently entitled, based on the employee’s expected date of separation or retirement. Determining the PBO requires the Company to make assumptions, including the selection of a discount rate for each of the North America and United Kingdom plans. 

We identified the evaluation of the Company’s measurements of the PBO as a critical audit matter. Specialized skills were needed to evaluate the discount rates utilized in the measurement of the PBO for each of the North America and United Kingdom plans. In addition, subjective auditor judgment was required to evaluate these discount rates, as minor changes to these discount rates could have a significant impact on the PBO.

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Table of ContentsCF INDUSTRIES HOLDINGS, INC.

The following are the primary procedures we performed to address this critical audit matter. We evaluated the design and tested the operating effectiveness of certain internal controls over the Company’s PBO accounting process, including controls related to the determination of discount rates. We involved actuarial professionals with specialized skills and knowledge, who assisted in:

•developing an understanding and assessing the methods used by the Company’s actuaries to develop the discount rates

•evaluating the relevance and reliability of information used by the Company’s actuaries