Accounting Standards Recently Issued In November 2024, the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB") issued Accounting Standards Update ("ASU") 2024-03, Income Statement—Reporting Comprehensive Income—Expense Disaggregation Disclosures (Subtopic 220-40): Disaggregation of Income Statement Expenses. The amendments in this update require entities to disclose disaggregated information about certain costs and expenses in commonly presented income statement expense captions. The amendments will require increased interim and annual footnote disclosures either prospectively or retrospectively for reporting periods presented in interim and annual company filings. The amendments in this update do not affect the recognition, measurement, or financial statement presentation of income statement expenses and will be effective for Wabtec's annual reporting periods beginning January 1, 2027 and interim reporting periods beginning January 1, 2028. The Company is assessing the extent of the impact of the amendments on its future filings.
Accounting Standards Recently Adopted In December 2023, the FASB issued ASU 2023-09, Income Taxes (Topic 740): Improvements to Income Tax Disclosures. The amendments in this update require entities to disclose on an annual basis specific categories within the income tax rate reconciliation and provide additional information for reconciling items that meet a quantitative threshold. The amendments in this update also require enhanced disaggregation of disclosures about income taxes paid and income tax expense, among other changes. The amendments in this update do not affect the recognition, measurement, or financial statement presentation of income taxes and are effective for Wabtec's annual reporting periods beginning January 1, 2025. The amendments require increased annual disclosures on current and future comparable reporting periods presented in annual company filings. The new annual disclosure requirements are included in Note 11.
About New Standards Disclosures
New accounting standards disclosures describe recently adopted pronouncements and those not yet effective, along with management's assessment of their expected impact. This section provides an early warning system for upcoming changes to how a company reports its financial results, often years before the new rules take effect.
Key signals: when management describes a not-yet-adopted standard's impact as "material" or "still being evaluated," it signals potential significant changes to reported metrics upon adoption. Watch for standards that affect a company's core operations — for example, revenue recognition changes for software companies or lease accounting changes for retailers with large store footprints. The transition method chosen (full retrospective versus modified retrospective) affects comparability with prior periods. Companies that delay adoption to the latest permitted date may be struggling with implementation complexity. Compare the disclosed impact assessments against peers in the same industry to gauge whether management's expectations are reasonable.