Overview, Basis of Presentation and Significant Accounting Policies

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2025

Overview, Basis of Presentation and Significant Accounting Policies

Note 1. Overview, Basis of Presentation and Significant Accounting Policies

Description of Business

DFIN is a leading global provider of innovative software and technology-enabled financial regulatory and compliance solutions. The Company provides regulatory filing and deal solutions via its software, technology-enabled services and print and distribution solutions to public and private companies, mutual funds and other regulated investment firms, to serve its clients’ regulatory and compliance needs. DFIN helps its clients comply with applicable regulations where and how they want to work in a digital world, providing numerous solutions tailored to each client’s business needs. The prevailing trend is toward clients choosing to utilize the Company’s software solutions, in conjunction with its tech-enabled services, to meet their document and filing needs, while at the same time shifting away from physical print and distribution of documents, except for when it is still regulatorily required or requested by investors.

The Company serves its clients’ regulatory and compliance needs throughout their respective life cycles. For its capital markets clients, the Company offers solutions that allow companies to comply with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) regulations and support their corporate financial transactions and regulatory/financial reporting through the use of digital document creation and online content management tools; filing agent services, where applicable; solutions to facilitate clients’ communications with their investors; and virtual data rooms and other deal management solutions. For investment companies clients, the Company provides solutions that allow investment companies to comply with SEC regulations and support financial and regulatory reporting through the use of content management and technology-enabled solutions for creating, compiling and filing regulatory communications as well as digital-driven solutions for distributing content to investors.

Services and Products

The Company separately reports its net sales and related cost of sales for its software solutions, tech-enabled services and print and distribution offerings. The Company’s software solutions consist of ActiveDisclosure® (“ActiveDisclosure”), the Arc Suite® software platform (“Arc Suite”) and Venue® Virtual Data Room (“Venue”). The Company’s tech-enabled services offerings consist of document composition, compliance-related SEC Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (“EDGAR”) filing services and transactional solutions. The Company’s print and distribution offerings primarily consist of conventional and digital printed products and related shipping.

Basis of Presentation

The accompanying Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements include the accounts of DFIN and all majority-owned subsidiaries and have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States (“GAAP”) for interim financial information and in accordance with the rules and regulations of the SEC. Accordingly, they do not include all of the information and footnotes required by GAAP for complete financial statements. The financial data presented herein should be read in conjunction with the audited Consolidated Financial Statements and accompanying notes included in the Company’s latest Annual Report. In the opinion of management, the financial data presented includes all adjustments necessary to present fairly the results of operations, financial position and cash flows for the interim periods presented. Results of interim periods should not be considered indicative of the results for the full year.

Significant Accounting Policies

Use of Estimates—The preparation of financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires the extensive use of management’s estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities as well as disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities as of the date of the financial statements and the reported amounts of revenue and expenses during the reporting periods. Actual results could differ from these estimates. The Company’s significant accounting policies and critical accounting estimates are disclosed in the Annual Report.

Allowances for Expected Losses—Transactions affecting the current expected credit loss (“CECL”) reserve during the nine months ended September 30, 2025 and 2024 were as follows:


	September 30,
	2025			2024
Balance, beginning of year	$	25.0		$	18.9
Provisions charged to expense		7.6			14.3
Write-offs, reclassifications and other		(8.4	)		(8.8	)
Balance, end of period	$	24.2		$	24.4

The components of the CECL reserve balance at September 30, 2025 and December 31, 2024 were as follows:


	September 30, 2025		December 31, 2024
Provision for accounts receivable	$	23.7	$	24.6
Provision for unbilled receivables and contract assets		0.5		0.4
Total	$	24.2	$	25.0

Assets Held for Sale—On March 29, 2024, the Company sold land for net proceeds of $13.2 million, of which $12.4 million was received in the first quarter of 2024. The Company recognized a net pre-tax gain of $10.6 million related to the sale, of which $9.8 million was recorded during the nine months ended September 30, 2024. The net pre-tax gain was recorded in other operating income, net on the Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations within the Capital Markets - Compliance and Communications Management operating segment.

Property, Plant and Equipment, net—The components of the Company’s property, plant and equipment, net at September 30, 2025 and December 31, 2024 were as follows:


	September 30, 2025			December 31, 2024
Land	$	0.3		$	0.3
Buildings		13.2			15.1
Machinery and equipment		55.5			56.0
		69.0			71.4
Less: Accumulated depreciation		(62.2	)		(62.5	)
Total	$	6.8		$	8.9

Depreciation expense was $1.3 million and $1.6 million for the three months ended September 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively, and $3.8 million and $4.9 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively.

Software, net—Capitalized software development costs are amortized over their estimated useful life using the straight-line method, up to a maximum of three years. Amortization expense related to internally-developed software was $13.9 million and $15.6 million for the three months ended September 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively, and $40.6 million and $40.5 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively.

Investments—The carrying value of the Company’s investments in equity securities was $6.3 million and $5.8 million at September 30, 2025 and December 31, 2024, respectively. The Company measures its equity securities that do not have a readily determinable fair value at cost minus impairment, if any, plus or minus changes resulting from observable price changes in orderly transactions for the identical or a similar investment of the same issuer. The Company performs an assessment on a quarterly basis to determine whether triggering events for impairment exist and to identify any observable price changes.

Recently Issued Accounting Pronouncements

In December 2023, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) issued Accounting Standards Update (“ASU”) No. 2023-09, “Income Taxes (Topic 740): Improvements to Income Tax Disclosures,” which requires that an entity disclose consistent categories and greater disaggregation of information in the income tax rate reconciliation, income taxes paid disaggregated by jurisdiction, among other amendments that expand income tax disclosures. The standard is effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2024. The Company expects that the adoption of this standard will result in additional income tax disclosures to the consolidated financial statements.

In November 2024 and January 2025, the FASB issued ASU No. 2024-03, “Income Statement—Reporting Comprehensive Income—Expense Disaggregation Disclosures (Subtopic 220-40): Disaggregation of Income Statement Expenses,” and ASU No. 2025-01, “Income Statement—Reporting Comprehensive Income—Expense Disaggregation Disclosures (Subtopic 220-40): Clarifying the Effective Date,” respectively, which require that an entity disclose disaggregated information about specific natural expense categories underlying certain statement of operations expense line items that are considered relevant in a tabular format within the notes to the consolidated financial statements, among other amendments that expand statement of operations expense disclosures. The standards are effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2026, and interim periods within fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2027. The Company is currently evaluating the impact of the adoption of this standard on its disclosures to the consolidated financial statements.

In September 2025, the FASB issued ASU No. 2025-06, “Intangibles—Goodwill and Other—Internal-Use Software (Subtopic 350-40): Targeted Improvements to the Accounting for Internal-Use Software,” which clarifies the threshold entities apply to begin capitalizing costs and removes references to software development project stages. The ASU requires that an entity capitalize software costs when management has authorized and committed to funding the software project and when it is probable that the project will be completed and the software will be used to perform the intended functions, including consideration of whether there is significant development uncertainty. The standard is effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2027. The Company is currently evaluating the impact of the adoption of this standard on the consolidated financial statements.

Donnelley Financial Solutions, Inc. 10-Q