Annual report [Section 13 and 15(d), not S-K Item 405]

RETIREMENT PLANS AND RELATED POST RETIREMENT BENEFITS

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RETIREMENT PLANS AND RELATED POST RETIREMENT BENEFITS
 12 Months Ended
Dec. 31, 2024
Retirement Benefits [Abstract]  
RETIREMENT PLANS AND RELATED POST RETIREMENT BENEFITS RETIREMENT PLANS AND RELATED POST RETIREMENT BENEFITS
The Company has two non-qualified supplemental retirement defined benefit plans (“SERP” and “SERP II”) for certain current and retired executive officers. The accumulated benefit obligation of the plans as of December 31, 2024 and 2023 amounts to $21.4 million and $22.0 million, respectively.
The plans provide for benefits based upon average annual compensation and years of service and, in the case of SERP, there are offsets for social security and profit sharing benefits. It is the Company’s intent to fund the plans as plan benefits become payable, since no assets exist at December 31, 2024 or 2023 for either of the plans.
The Company accounts for the funded status (i.e., the difference between the fair value of plan assets and the projected benefit obligations) of its pension plans in accordance with the recognition and disclosure provisions of ASC Topic 715, Compensation, Retirement Benefits, which requires the Company to recognize the funded status in its balance sheet, with a corresponding adjustment to Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income (“AOCI”), net of tax. These amounts will be subsequently recognized as net periodic pension cost pursuant to the Company’s historical policy for amortizing such amounts. Further, actuarial gains and losses that arise in subsequent periods and are not recognized as net periodic pension cost in the same periods will be recognized as a component of AOCI. If actuarial gains and losses exceed ten percent of the projected benefit obligation, we amortize them over the average expected future lifetime of participants.
Unrecognized prior service costs of $0.3 million and unrecognized actuarial gains of $4.9 million are included in AOCI at December 31, 2024 and have not yet been recognized in net periodic pension cost.
The reconciliation of the beginning and ending balances of the projected benefit obligation of the plans for the years ended December 31 is as follows:
(In thousands) 2024 2023
Funded Status
Projected Benefit Obligation
Beginning of the Year — January 1 $ 28,798  $ 26,210 
Service Cost —  105 
Interest Cost 1,371  1,302 
Actuarial (Gain) Loss (6,134) 1,529 
Special Termination Benefits 624  — 
Benefits Paid (348) (348)
End of the Year — December 31 $ 24,311  $ 28,798 
In 2024, the net actuarial gain of $6.1 million is due to the increase of 69 basis points in the discount rate and change in the bonus scale used to measure the benefit obligation as of December 31, 2024 compared to the prior year. The Company incurred charges of $0.6 million in 2024 associated with a waiver of an early retirement penalty provided by the plan related to a retiring participant. The assumptions used to calculate the projected benefit obligation as of December 31 are as follows:
2024 2023
Discount Rate 5.48% 4.79%
Future Average Compensation Increases 3.00% 3.00%
The plans are unfunded at December 31, 2024 and are recognized in the accompanying Consolidated Balance Sheets as a current accrued pension liability of $1.0 million and a long-term accrued pension liability of $23.3 million.
The service cost component of net periodic benefit cost is included in SG&A expenses, and all other net periodic benefit costs components (such as interest cost, prior service cost amortization and actuarial gain/loss amortization) are reported outside of operating income, within Other (Income) Expense, Net in the accompanying Consolidated Statements of Operations.
The following table summarizes the components of the net periodic cost for the years ended December 31:
(In thousands) 2024 2023 2022
Net Periodic Cost
Service Cost — Benefits Earned During Period $ —  $ 105  $ 138 
Interest Cost 1,371  1,302  834 
Amortization of Prior Service Cost 386  386  386 
Amortization of Losses 738  358  949 
Net Periodic Cost $ 2,495  $ 2,151  $ 2,307 
The assumptions used to determine the net periodic cost are as follows:
2024 2023 2022
Discount Rate 4.79% 5.00% 2.75%
Future Average Compensation Increases
3.00%
2.00% - 3.00%
2.00% - 3.00%
Benefit payments expected in each of the next five years are as follows: 2025 - $1.0 million, 2026 - $0.9 million, 2027 - $0.9 million, 2028 - $1.7 million, and 2029 - $2.0 million. Benefits expected to be paid in the aggregate between 2030 and 2034 are $9.5 million. Given that the plans are unfunded, these amounts are what the Company expects to contribute to the plans in each respective year.
Participants in the SERP are entitled to paid medical, dental and long-term care insurance benefits upon retirement under the plan. The measurement date for determining the plan obligation and cost is December 31. The accumulated postretirement benefit obligation is $0.8 million at December 31, 2024 and 2023. The plan is recognized in the accompanying Consolidated Balance Sheets as a current accrued pension liability of $0.1 million and a long-term accrued pension liability of $0.7 million. The net periodic cost for the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023 and 2022 was not material.
The Company is a participating employer in a trustee-managed multiemployer defined benefit pension plan for employees who participate in collective bargaining agreements. The plan generally provides retirement benefits to employees based on years of service to the Company. Contributions are based on the hours worked and are expensed on a current basis. The plan is 95.3% funded as of January 1, 2024. The Company’s contributions to the plan were $0.9 million in 2024, $0.7 million in 2023 and $0.5 million in 2022. These contributions represent less than 1% of total contributions to the plan.