(1)   Basis of Presentation

        We are an integrated communications company engaged primarily in providing an array of communications services to our residential, business, governmental and wholesale customers. Our communications services include local and long-distance, network access, private line (including special access), public access, broadband, data, managed hosting (including cloud hosting), colocation, wireless and video services. In certain local and regional markets, we also provide local access and fiber transport services to competitive local exchange carriers and security monitoring.

        Our consolidated balance sheet as of December 31, 2012, which was derived from our audited consolidated financial statements, and our unaudited interim consolidated financial statements provided herein have been prepared in accordance with the instructions for Form 10-Q. Certain information and footnote disclosures normally included in financial statements prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America have been condensed or omitted pursuant to rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"); however, in our opinion, the disclosures made are adequate to make the information presented not misleading. We believe that these consolidated financial statements include all normal recurring adjustments necessary to fairly present the results for the interim periods. The consolidated results of operations for the first three months of the year are not indicative of the consolidated results of operations that might be expected for the entire year. These consolidated financial statements should be read in conjunction with the audited consolidated financial statements and the notes thereto included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012.

        The accompanying consolidated financial statements include our accounts and the accounts of our subsidiaries over which we exercise control. All intercompany amounts and transactions with our consolidated subsidiaries have been eliminated.

        To simplify the overall presentation of our consolidated financial statements, we report immaterial amounts attributable to noncontrolling interests in certain of our subsidiaries as follows: (i) income attributable to noncontrolling interests in other income (expense), (ii) equity attributable to noncontrolling interests in additional paid-in capital and (iii) cash flows attributable to noncontrolling interests in other financing activities.

        We also have reclassified certain other prior period amounts to conform to the current period presentation, including the categorization of our segment reporting. See Note 8—Segment Information for additional information. These changes had no impact on total revenues, total operating expenses or net income for any period.

(2)   Goodwill

        As previously announced, effective January 3, 2013, we restructured our operating segments to support our new operating structure. We attributed our goodwill balances to our realigned segments as follows:

For additional information on the reorganization of our segments, see Note 8—Segment Information

(3)   Long-Term Debt and Credit Facilities

        Long-term debt, including unamortized discounts and premiums, is as follows:

New Issuance

        On March 21, 2013, CenturyLink issued $1 billion aggregate principal amount of 5.625% Notes due 2020 in exchange for net proceeds, after deducting underwriting discounts and expenses, of approximately $988 million. The Notes are unsecured obligations and may be redeemed, in whole or in part, at any time at a redemption price equal to the greater of par or a "make-whole" rate specified in the Notes, plus accrued and unpaid interest to the redemption date. In addition, at any time on or prior to April 1, 2016, we may redeem up to 35% of the principal amount of the Notes at a redemption price equal to 105.625% of the principal amount thereof, plus accrued and unpaid interest to the redemption date, with the net cash proceeds of certain equity offerings. Under certain circumstances, we will be required to make an offer to repurchase the Notes at a price of 101% of their aggregate principal amount plus accrued and unpaid interest to the repurchase date.

Covenants

        As of March 31, 2013, we believe we were in compliance with the provisions and covenants contained in our Credit Facility and other debt agreements.

(4)   Severance and Leased Real Estate

        Periodically, we have reductions in our workforce and have accrued liabilities for related severance costs. These workforce reductions resulted primarily from the progression or completion of our integration plans, increased competitive pressures and reduced workload demands due to the loss of access lines.

        We report severance liabilities within accrued expenses and other liabilities-salaries and benefits in our consolidated balance sheets and report severance expenses in cost of services and products and selling, general and administrative expenses in our consolidated statements of operations. We have not allocated any severance expense to our consumer, business and wholesale segments.

        We report the current portion of liabilities for ceased-use real estate leases in accrued expenses and other liabilities and report the noncurrent portion in deferred credits and other liabilities in our consolidated balance sheets. We report the related expenses in selling, general and administrative expenses in our consolidated statements of operations. At March 31, 2013, the current and noncurrent portions of our leased real estate accrual were $19 million and $106 million, respectively. The remaining lease terms range from 0.3 to 12.8 years, with a weighted average of 8.9 years.

        Changes in our accrued liabilities for severance expenses and leased real estate were as follows:

(5)   Employee Benefits

        Net periodic pension benefit (income) expense included the following components:

        Net periodic post-retirement benefit expense (income) included the following components:

        We report net periodic pension benefit (income) expense and net periodic post-retirement benefit expense in cost of services and products and selling, general and administrative expenses on our consolidated statements of operations.

(6)   Earnings per Common Share

        Basic and diluted earnings per common share for the three months ended March 31, 2013 and 2012 were calculated as follows:

        Our calculation of diluted earnings per common share excludes shares of common stock that are issuable upon exercise of stock options when the exercise price is greater than the average market price of our common stock during the period. Such potentially issuable shares totaled 2.4 million and 1.3 million for the three months ended 2013 and 2012, respectively.

(7)   Fair Value Disclosure

        Our financial instruments consist of cash and cash equivalents, accounts receivable, accounts payable and long-term debt, excluding capital lease obligations. Due to their short-term nature, the carrying amounts of our cash and cash equivalents, accounts receivable and accounts payable approximate their fair values.

        Fair value is defined as the price that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between independent and knowledgeable parties who are willing and able to transact for an asset or liability at the measurement date. We use valuation techniques that maximize the use of observable inputs and minimize the use of unobservable inputs when determining fair value, and then we rank the estimated values based on the reliability of the inputs used following the fair value hierarchy set forth by the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB").

        We determined the fair values of our long-term debt, including the current portion, based on quoted market prices where available or, if not available, based on discounted future cash flows using current market interest rates.

        The three input levels in the hierarchy of fair value measurements are defined by the FASB generally as follows:

        The following table presents the carrying amounts and estimated fair values of our long-term debt, excluding capital lease obligations, as well as the input level used to determine the fair values:

(8)   Segment Information

        On January 3, 2013, we announced a reorganization of our operating segments. Consequently, beginning with the first quarter of 2013, we are reporting the following four segments in our consolidated financial statements: consumer, business, wholesale and data hosting. The primary purpose of the reorganization is to strengthen our focus on the business market while continuing our commitment to our wholesale, hosting and consumer customers. The reorganization combined business sales and operations functions that resided in the enterprise markets—network segment and the regional markets segment into the new unified business segment. The remaining customers serviced by the regional markets segment became the new consumer segment.

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  Consumer. Consists generally of providing strategic and legacy products and services to residential consumers. Our strategic products and services offered to these customers include our broadband, wireless and video services, including our Prism TV services. Our legacy services offered to these customers include local and long-distance service;
  
  

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  Business. Consists generally of providing strategic and legacy products and services to commercial, enterprise, global and government customers. Our strategic products and services offered to these customers include our private line (including special access), broadband, Ethernet, Multiple Protocol Labeling Switching ("MPLS"), Voice over Internet Protocol ("VoIP"), managed customer premise equipment ("CPE") services and network management services. Our legacy services offered to these customers include local and long-distance service;
  
  

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  Wholesale. Consists generally of providing strategic and legacy products and services to other communications providers. Our strategic products and services offered to these customers are mainly private line (including special access) and MPLS. Our legacy services offered to these customers include unbundled network elements ("UNEs") which allow our wholesale customers the use of our network or a combination of our network and their own networks to provide voice and data services to their customers, long-distance and switched access services; and
  
  

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  Data hosting. Consists primarily of providing colocation, managed hosting and cloud hosting services to national and international enterprise and government customers.

        We have restated previously reported segment results for the three months ended March 31, 2012, due to the above-described restructuring of our business. Segment results are summarized below:

        We categorize our products and services into the following four categories:

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  Strategic services, which include primarily broadband, private line (including special access which we market to wholesale and business customers), MPLS (which is a data networking technology that can deliver the quality of service required to support real-time voice and video), hosting (including cloud hosting and managed hosting), colocation, Ethernet, video (including resold satellite and our facilities-based video services), VoIP and Verizon Wireless services;
  
  

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  Legacy services, which include primarily local, long-distance, switched access, public access, integrated services digital network ("ISDN") (which uses regular telephone lines to support voice, video and data applications), and traditional wide area network ("WAN") services (which allows a local communications network to link to networks in remote locations);
  
  

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  Data integration, which includes the sale of telecommunications equipment located on customers' premises and related professional services, such as network management, installation and maintenance of data equipment and building of proprietary fiber-optic networks for our government and business customers; and
  
  

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  Other revenues, which consists primarily of Universal Service Fund ("USF") revenue and surcharges. Unlike the first three revenue categories, other revenues are not included in our segment revenues.

        Our operating revenues for our products and services consisted of the following categories:

        Other operating revenues include revenues from universal service funds which allow us to recover a portion of our costs under federal and state cost recovery mechanisms and certain surcharges to our customers, including billings for our required contributions to several USF programs. These surcharge billings to our customers are reflected on a gross basis in our statements of operations (included in both operating revenues and expenses) and aggregated approximately $128 million and $135 million for the three months ended March 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively. We also generate other operating revenues from leasing and subleasing of space in our office buildings, warehouses and other properties. We centrally-manage the activities that generate these other operating revenues and consequently these revenues are not included in any of our four segments presented in the segment results table above.

        Our segment revenues include all revenues from our strategic, legacy and data integration as described in more detail above. Segment revenues are based upon each customer's classification to an individual segment. We report our segment revenues based upon all services provided to that segment's customers. We report our segment expenses for our four segments as follows:

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  Direct expenses, which primarily are specific expenses incurred as a direct result of providing services and products to segment customers, along with selling, general and administrative expenses that are directly associated with specific segment customers or activities; and
  
  

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  Allocated expenses, which include network expenses, facilities expenses and other expenses such as fleet and real estate expenses.

        We do not assign depreciation and amortization expense to our segments, as the related assets and capital expenditures are centrally managed. Similarly, severance expenses, restructuring expenses and, subject to an exception for our data hosting segment, certain centrally managed administrative functions (such as finance, information technology, legal and human resources) are not assigned to our segments. Interest expense is also excluded from segment results because we manage our financing on a total company basis and have not allocated assets or debt to specific segments. In addition, other income (expense) does not relate to our segment operations and is therefore excluded from our segment results.

        The following table reconciles segment income to net income:

(9)   Commitments and Contingencies

        In this Note, when we refer to a class action as "putative" it is because a class has been alleged, but not certified in that matter. Until and unless a class has been certified by the court, it has not been established that the named plaintiffs represent the class of plaintiffs they purport to represent.

        We have established accrued liabilities for the matters described below where losses are deemed probable and reasonably estimable.

        We are vigorously defending against all of the matters described below. As a matter of course, we are prepared both to litigate the matters to judgment, as well as to evaluate and consider all settlement opportunities.

Litigation Matters Relating to CenturyLink and Embarq

        In December 2009, subsidiaries of CenturyLink filed two lawsuits against subsidiaries of Sprint Nextel to recover terminating access charges for VoIP traffic owed under various interconnection agreements and tariffs which presently approximate $34 million. The lawsuits allege that Sprint Nextel has breached contracts, violated tariffs, and violated the Federal Communications Act by failing to pay these charges. One lawsuit, filed on behalf of all legacy Embarq operating entities, was tried in federal court in Virginia in August 2010 and, in March 2011, a ruling was issued in our favor and against Sprint Nextel. That ruling has now been affirmed on appeal. The other lawsuit, filed on behalf of all Legacy CenturyLink operating entities, is pending in federal court in Louisiana. In that case, in early 2011 the Court dismissed certain of CenturyLink's claims, referred other claims to the FCC, and stayed the litigation. In April 2012, Sprint Nextel filed a petition with the FCC, seeking a declaratory ruling that CenturyLink's access charges do not apply to VoIP originated calls. We have not deferred revenue related to these matters because we do not believe an adverse outcome is probable based upon current circumstances.

        In William Douglas Fulghum, et al. v. Embarq Corporation, et al., filed on December 28, 2007 in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas, a group of retirees filed a putative class action lawsuit challenging the decision to make certain modifications in retiree benefits programs relating to life insurance, medical insurance and prescription drug benefits, generally effective January 1, 2006 and January 1, 2008 (which, at the time of the modifications, was expected to reduce estimated future expenses for the subject benefits by more than $300 million). Defendants include Embarq, certain of its benefit plans, its Employee Benefits Committee and the individual plan administrator of certain of its benefits plans. Additional defendants include Sprint Nextel and certain of its benefit plans. The Court certified a class on certain of plaintiffs' claims, but rejected class certification as to other claims. Embarq and other defendants continue to vigorously contest these claims and charges. On October 14, 2011, the Fulghum lawyers filed a new, related lawsuit, Abbott et al. v. Sprint Nextel et al. CenturyLink/Embarq is not named a defendant in the lawsuit. In Abbott, approximately 1,500 plaintiffs allege breach of fiduciary duty in connection with the changes in retiree benefits that also are at issue in the Fulghum case. The Abbott plaintiffs are all members of the class that was certified in Fulghum on claims for allegedly vested benefits (Counts I and III), and the Abbott claims are similar to the Fulghum breach of fiduciary duty claim (Count II), on which the Fulghum court denied class certification. The Court has stayed proceedings in Abbott indefinitely. On February 14, 2013, the Fulghum court dismissed the majority of the plaintiffs' claims in that case. Embarq and the other defendants will continue to vigorously contest any remaining claims in Fulghum and seek to have the claims in the Abbott case dismissed on similar grounds. We have not accrued a liability for these matters because we believe it is premature (i) to determine whether an accrual is warranted and, (ii) if so, to determine a reasonable estimate of probable liability.

Litigation Matters Relating to Qwest

        On September 29, 2010, the trustees in the Dutch bankruptcy proceeding for KPNQwest, N.V. (of which Qwest was a major shareholder) filed a lawsuit in the District Court of Haarlem, the Netherlands, alleging tort and mismanagement claims under Dutch law. Qwest and Koninklijke KPN N.V. ("KPN") are defendants in this lawsuit along with a number of former KPNQwest supervisory board members and a former officer of KPNQwest, some of whom were formerly affiliated with Qwest. Plaintiffs allege, among other things, that defendants' actions were a cause of the bankruptcy of KPNQwest, and they seek damages for the bankruptcy deficit of KPNQwest, which is claimed to be approximately €4.200 billion (or approximately $5.4 billion based on the exchange rate on March 31, 2013), plus statutory interest. Two lawsuits asserting similar claims were previously filed against Qwest and others in federal courts in New Jersey in 2004 and Colorado in 2009; those courts dismissed the lawsuits without prejudice on the grounds that the claims should not be litigated in the United States.

        On September 13, 2006, Cargill Financial Markets, Plc and Citibank, N.A. filed a lawsuit in the District Court of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, against Qwest, KPN, KPN Telecom B.V., and other former officers, employees or supervisory board members of KPNQwest, some of whom were formerly affiliated with Qwest. The lawsuit alleges that defendants misrepresented KPNQwest's financial and business condition in connection with the origination of a credit facility and wrongfully allowed KPNQwest to borrow funds under that facility. Plaintiffs allege damages of approximately €219 million (or approximately $281 million based on the exchange rate on March 31, 2013). On April 25, 2012, the court issued its judgment denying the claims asserted by Cargill and Citibank in their lawsuit. Cargill and Citibank are appealing that decision.

        We have not accrued a liability for the above matters. Regarding the 2010 proceeding, we believe it is premature to determine whether an accrual is warranted and, if so, a reasonable estimate of our probable liability. Regarding the 2006 suit, we do not believe that liability is probable. We will continue to defend against both KPNQwest litigation matters vigorously.

        The terms and conditions of applicable bylaws, certificates or articles of incorporation, agreements or applicable law may obligate Qwest to indemnify its former directors, officers or employees with respect to certain of the matters described above, and Qwest has been advancing legal fees and costs to certain former directors, officers or employees in connection with certain matters described above.

        Several putative class actions relating to the installation of fiber optic cable in certain rights-of-way were filed against Qwest on behalf of landowners on various dates and in courts located in 34 states in which Qwest has such cable (Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.) For the most part, the complaints challenge our right to install our fiber optic cable in railroad rights-of-way. The complaints allege that the railroads own the right-of-way as an easement that did not include the right to permit us to install our cable in the right-of-way without the Plaintiffs' consent. Most of the currently pending actions purport to be brought on behalf of state-wide classes in the named Plaintiffs' respective states, although one action pending before the Illinois Court of Appeals purports to be brought on behalf of landowners in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin. In general, the complaints seek damages on theories of trespass and unjust enrichment, as well as punitive damages. After previous attempts to enter into a single nationwide settlement in a single court proved unsuccessful, the parties proceeded to seek court approval of settlements on a state-by-state basis. To date, the parties have received final approval of such settlements in 22 states (Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin), have received preliminary approval of the settlements in eight states (California, Kentucky, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Utah), and have not yet received either preliminary or final approval in four states (Arizona, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Texas). We have accrued an amount that we believe is probable for these matters; however, the amount is not material to our consolidated financial statements.

Other Matters

        From time to time, we are involved in other proceedings incidental to our business, including patent infringement allegations, administrative hearings of state public utility commissions relating primarily to rate making, actions relating to employee claims, various tax issues, environmental law issues, grievance hearings before labor regulatory agencies, and miscellaneous third party tort actions. The outcome of these other proceedings is not predictable. However, based on current circumstances we do not believe that the ultimate resolution of these other proceedings, after considering available defenses and insurance coverage, will have a material adverse effect on our financial position, results of operations or cash flows.

(10) Other Financial Information

Other Current Assets

        The following table presents details of our other current assets:

        The increase in other current assets of $35 million as of March 31, 2013 as compared to December 31, 2012 was primarily due to increases in materials and supplies, deferred revenue, short-term deferred charges and prepayments of $78 million, which were partially offset by the sale of wireless spectrum. In January 2013, we sold $43 million of our wireless spectrum assets held for sale. This transaction resulted in a gain of $32 million, which is recorded as other income on the consolidated statements of operations. Within the coming twelve months, we expect to reach agreements with various other purchasers for the remaining spectrum, the consummation of which will be subject to regulatory approval.

Selected Current Liabilities

        Current liabilities reflected in our balance sheets include accounts payable and other current liabilities as follows:

        Included in accounts payable at March 31, 2013 and December 31, 2012 were $91 million and $132 million, respectively, representing book overdrafts.

        Other current liabilities increased primarily due to the March 31, 2013 liability for unsettled repurchased common shares and higher real estate related liabilities.

(11) Labor Union Contracts

        Approximately 39% of our employees are members of various bargaining units represented by the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Approximately 12,000, or 26%, of our employees are subject to collective bargaining agreements that expired October 6, 2012. Since then, we have been negotiating the terms of new agreements. In the meantime, the predecessor agreements have been extended, and the applicable unions have agreed to provide us with at least twenty-four hour advance notice before terminating those predecessor agreements. Any strikes or other changes in our labor relations could have a significant impact on our business. If we fail to extend or renegotiate our collective bargaining agreements with our labor unions as they expire from time to time, or if our unionized employees were to engage in a strike or other work stoppage, our business and operating results could be materially harmed. To help mitigate this potential risk, we have established contingency plans in which we would assign trained, non-represented employees to cover jobs for represented employees in the event of a work stoppage to provide continuity for our customers.

(12) Repurchase of CenturyLink Common Stock

        In February 2013, the Board of Directors authorized us to repurchase up to $2 billion of our outstanding common stock. During the three months ended March 31, 2013, we repurchased 11.1 million shares of our outstanding common stock in the open market. These shares were repurchased for an aggregate market price of $386 million, or an average purchase price of $34.62 per share. The repurchased common stock has been retired. As of March 31, 2013, we had approximately $1.614 billion in stock remaining available for repurchase under the Stock Repurchase Program. The figures set forth above exclude 0.9 million shares that, as of March 31, 2103, we had agreed to purchase under the program for $32 million, or an average purchase price of $35.08 per share, in transactions that settled early in the second quarter of 2013.

(13) Other Comprehensive Earnings

        The table below summarizes changes in our accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) by component:

        The table below presents information about first quarter 2013 reclassifications out of accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) by component: