Commitments and Contingencies
Future minimum rental commitments under leases are disclosed in Note 11. Commitments for expenditures on property, plant and equipment at December 28, 2025 were approximately $247.4 million.
The Company is subject to various domestic and international environmental laws and regulations that govern the discharge of pollutants and disposal of wastes, and which may require that it investigate and remediate the effects of the release or disposal of materials at sites associated with past and present operations. The Company could incur substantial cleanup costs, fines, and civil or criminal sanctions, third party property damage or personal injury claims as a result of violations or liabilities under these laws or noncompliance with environmental permits required at its facilities. The Company is currently involved in the investigation and remediation of a number of its current and former sites, as well as third party sites.
Environmental liabilities are recorded when the Company’s liability is probable and the costs are reasonably estimable. In many cases, however, the Company is not able to determine whether it is liable or, if liability is probable, to reasonably estimate the loss or range of loss. Estimates of the Company’s liability remain subject to additional uncertainties, including the nature and extent of site contamination, available remediation alternatives, the extent of corrective actions that may be required, and the number, participation, and financial condition of other potentially responsible parties (PRPs). The Company adjusts its accruals to reflect new information as appropriate. Future adjustments could have a material adverse effect on the Company’s consolidated results of operations in a given period, but the Company cannot reliably predict the amounts of such future adjustments.
At December 28, 2025, the Company’s reserves for environmental remediation obligations totaled approximately $15.0 million, of which $7.0 million was included in other current liabilities. The reserve includes estimated probable future costs of $2.0 million for federal Superfund and comparable state-managed sites; $7.0 million for formerly owned or operated sites for which the Company has remediation or indemnification obligations; and $6.0 million for owned or controlled sites at which Company operations have been or plan to be discontinued. The Company continues to evaluate whether it may be able to recover a portion of future costs for environmental liabilities from third parties and to pursue such recoveries where appropriate.
Based on currently available information, it is reasonably possible that the costs for active matters may exceed the Company’s recorded reserves by as much as $16.0 million. Future investigation or remediation activities may result in the discovery of additional hazardous materials, potentially higher levels of contamination than discovered during prior investigation, and may impact costs associated with the success or lack thereof in remedial solutions. Therefore, future developments, administrative actions or liabilities relating to environmental matters could have a material adverse effect on the Company’s consolidated financial condition or results of operations.
The timing of expenditures depends on a number of factors that vary by site. The Company expects that it will expend present accruals over many years and that remediation of all sites with which it has been identified will be completed within thirty years.
A number of other lawsuits, claims and proceedings have been or may be asserted against the Company relating to the conduct of its currently and formerly owned businesses, including those pertaining to product liability, environmental, health and safety matters and occupational disease (including as each relates to alleged asbestos exposure), as well as patent infringement, commercial, government contracting, construction, employment, employee and retiree benefits, taxes, environmental, and stockholder and corporate governance matters. While the outcome of litigation cannot be predicted with certainty, and some of these lawsuits, claims or proceedings may be determined adversely to the Company, management does not believe that the disposition of any such pending matters is likely to have a material adverse effect on the Company’s financial condition or liquidity, although the resolution in any reporting period of one or more of these matters could have a material adverse effect on the Company’s consolidated results of operations for that period.
Beginning in 2020, the U.S. government enacted various relief packages in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, one of which was the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). The CARES Act included, among other items, provisions relating to refundable employee retention payroll tax credits. The Company applied for these employee retention tax credits and recognized a portion of the benefit from these credits as they were received in the statement of operations in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022 (see Noe 18). Due to the complex nature of the employee retention credit computations, the Company deferred recognition of a portion of the tax credits pending the completion of any potential audit or examination, or the expiration of the related statute of limitations. During the fiscal year ended December 28, 2025, the Company recognized a benefit of $7.2 million in cost of sales on the consolidated statement of operations due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for a portion of these credits. As of December 28, 2025, the Company has approximately $5.0 million of remaining deferred retention tax credits, of which the statute of limitations expires in 2028.

In August 2024, the Company received notice that it and certain of its affiliates are parties to two lawsuits captioned (1) William L. Schoen, Mary J. Nesbit, Robin L. Rosewicz, George E. Poole and James E. Swartz, Jr., individually and as representatives of a class of participants and beneficiaries of the Allegheny Technologies Incorporated Pension Plan v. ATI Inc., The Allegheny Technologies Incorporated Pension Plan Administrative Committee, State Street Global Advisors Trust Co., and John Does 1-5 (Case No. 2:24-cv-01109) and (2) John Souza and Karen Souza, individually and as representatives on behalf of a class of similarly situated persons v. ATI Inc. and State Street Global Advisors Trust Co. (Case No. 2:24-cv-01214), both of which are filed in federal district court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. These lawsuits, which were consolidated in late 2024, assert various claims associated with the Company’s October 2023 purchase of group annuity contracts to transfer a portion of its U.S. qualified defined benefit pension plan obligations to Athene Annuity and Life Company and Athene Annuity & Life Assurance of New York. We filed a Motion to Dismiss the consolidated claims in January 2025. Following an August 2025 hearing on the Motion to Dismiss, the magistrate judge covering the Motion issued a report recommending that all the plaintiffs’ claims be dismissed for lack of standing. The recommendation remains subject to review and disposition by the presiding judge. We dispute and intend to vigorously defend against these claims, but given the preliminary nature of these matters, cannot predict their outcome or estimate any range of reasonably possible loss at this time.

Historical Timeline

Fiscal YearFiled
2025Feb 20, 2026Showing above
2024Feb 21, 2025
2023Feb 23, 2024
2022Feb 24, 2023
2021Feb 25, 2022
2020Feb 26, 2021
2019Feb 25, 2020
2018Feb 28, 2019
2017Feb 20, 2018
2016Feb 24, 2017
2015Feb 26, 2016

About Commitments Disclosures

Commitments and contingencies disclosures catalog a company's off-balance-sheet obligations and legal exposures — purchase commitments, guarantee arrangements, pending litigation, and regulatory proceedings. These items represent potential future cash outflows that may not appear as liabilities on the balance sheet until they become probable and estimable.

Key signals: litigation reserves and disclosed loss ranges quantify management's estimate of legal exposure, but unquantified "reasonably possible" losses often represent the larger risk. Watch for changes in language around pending cases — shifts from "remote" to "reasonably possible" or increases in estimated loss ranges signal deteriorating outcomes. Unconditional purchase obligations and take-or-pay contracts create fixed cost structures that reduce operational flexibility. Guarantee arrangements for subsidiaries or joint ventures can create cascading obligations. Compare the total commitment schedule against projected free cash flow to assess whether the company can meet its obligations without additional financing.