ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. to Announce Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results July 20th

ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. to Announce Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results July 20th

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. (NYSE: SFBS) is scheduled to announce earnings and operating results for the quarter ended June 30, 2023 on July 20, 2023 at 4 p.m. ET. The news release will be available at www.servisfirstbancshares.com.

ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. will host a live audio webcast to discuss earnings and results on Thursday, July 20, 2023 beginning at 5:15 p.m. ET. The audio webcast can be accessed at www.servisfirstbancshares.com. A replay of the call will be available until July 31, 2023.

About ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc.

ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. is a bank holding company based in Birmingham, Alabama. Through its subsidiary ServisFirst Bank, ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. provides business and personal financial services from locations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Through the bank, we originate commercial, consumer and other loans and accept deposits, provide electronic banking services, such as online and mobile banking, including remote deposit capture, deliver treasury and cash management services and provide correspondent banking services to other financial institutions.

ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. files periodic reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Copies of its filings may be obtained through the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or at www.servisfirstbancshares.com.

More information about ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. may be obtained over the Internet at www.servisfirstbancshares.com or by calling (205) 949-0302.

ServisFirst Bank

Davis Mange (205) 949-3420

[email protected]

KEYWORDS: United States North America Alabama

INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Finance Banking Accounting Professional Services Other Professional Services

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Skechers Debuts on Fortune 500 List

Skechers Debuts on Fortune 500 List

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Skechers U.S.A., Inc. (NYSE:SKX), The Comfort Technology Company™ and third largest athletic footwear brand in the world, today announced that it has made the prestigious Fortune 500® list for the first time following record annual sales of $7.4 billion in 2022. Skechers is one of only four brands in the Apparel industry sector to make the list, debuting at number 488.

“It’s an incredible achievement for Skechers to make the Fortune 500 and be included on an elite list that features the top businesses in every industry,” said Michael Greenberg, president of Skechers. “This is yet another milestone in our journey which validates our business model of delivering products that offer comfort, innovation, style and quality at a reasonable price. This first appearance illustrates the strength, dedication and contributions of the entire Skechers family worldwide, and we look forward to climbing up the list in the years to come.”

Traded on the New York Stock Exchange since 1999, Skechers is one of only 18 companies on the 2023 Fortune 500 list that is still run by its founder-CEO, Robert Greenberg. Following record annual sales in 2022, Skechers continued to grow in 2023 with first quarter sales surpassing $2 billion, a milestone for the Company, which has announced a goal of $10 billion in annual sales by 2026.

A profile on Skechers that appears in the June/July issue of Fortune on newsstands now can be read here.

About SKECHERS U.S.A., Inc.

Skechers U.S.A., Inc. (NYSE:SKX), a Fortune 500® company based in Southern California, designs, develops and markets a diverse range of lifestyle and performance footwear, apparel and accessories for men, women and children. Collections from The Comfort Technology Company™ are available in over 180 countries and territories through department and specialty stores, and direct to consumers through digital stores and over 4,500 Company- and third-party-owned physical retail stores. The Company manages its international business through a network of wholly-owned subsidiaries, joint venture partners, and distributors. For more information, please visit about.skechers.com and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.

This announcement contains forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, Skechers’ future domestic and international growth, financial results and operations including expected net sales and earnings, its development of new products, future demand for its products, its planned domestic and international expansion, opening of new stores and additional expenditures, and advertising and marketing initiatives. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking language such as “believe,” “anticipate,” “expect,” “estimate,” “intend,” “plan,” “project,” “will,” “could,” “may,” “might,” or any variations of such words with similar meanings. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include the disruption of business and operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic; delays or disruptions in our supply chain; international economic, political and market conditions including the effects of inflation and foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations around the world, the challenging consumer retail markets in the United States and the impact of Russia’s war of Ukraine; sustaining, managing and forecasting costs and proper inventory levels; losing any significant customers; decreased demand by industry retailers and cancellation of order commitments due to the lack of popularity of particular designs and/or categories of products; maintaining brand image and intense competition among sellers of footwear for consumers, especially in the highly competitive performance footwear market; anticipating, identifying, interpreting or forecasting changes in fashion trends, consumer demand for the products and the various market factors described above; sales levels during the spring, back-to-school and holiday selling seasons; and other factors referenced or incorporated by reference in Skechers’ annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022 and its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q in 2023. Taking these and other risk factors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic into consideration, the dynamic nature of these circumstances means that what is stated in this press release could change at any time, and as a result, actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. The risks included here are not exhaustive. Skechers operates in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time and we cannot predict all such risk factors, nor can we assess the impact of all such risk factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. Moreover, reported results should not be considered an indication of future performance.

Jennifer Clay

SKECHERS U.S.A., Inc.

[email protected]

KEYWORDS: United States North America California

INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Fashion Retail Other Retail Manufacturing Specialty Other Manufacturing Textiles

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Allied Esports and OTK Announce Conclusion of Season Two of ‘ELEVATED,’ Presented by Progressive Insurance

Allied Esports and OTK Announce Conclusion of Season Two of ‘ELEVATED,’ Presented by Progressive Insurance

Contestant Mayorwertz Claimed $50,000 Grand Prize by Winning the Gauntlet-Style Series

LAS VEGAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Allied Esports, the wholly owned esports entertainment subsidiary of Allied Gaming & Entertainment Inc. (Nasdaq: AGAE), and award-winning gaming and entertainment content collective One True King (OTK) have officially wrapped Season Two of the highly anticipated content creator challenge show ELEVATED, presented by Progressive Insurance. The latest season of ELEVATED captivated audiences worldwide, showcasing the exceptional talents of up-and-coming streamers. The thrilling finale concluded with Mayorwertz as the victor, who walked away with a well-deserved $50,000 prize.

“We are thrilled to have crowned Mayorwertz as the champion of ELEVATED’s second season,” said Yinghua Chen, President & CEO, Allied Gaming & Entertainment and Allied Esports. “Season Two presented a number of fun and exciting challenges to viewers in the comfort of their homes and we are very pleased with the turnout so far. We thank OTK for their partnership in this venture and are excited for the future of the show as we continue to execute on Allied Gaming & Entertainment’s content strategy and work with additional high-quality companies to expand on our reach.”

During ELEVATED’s second season, a total of 17 participants were selected from a pool of thousands of applicants. Contestants faced a diverse range of challenges, ranging from cooking to gaming, with those who were eliminated then replaced by new players each week. With a collective reach of more than 35 million followers across their channels, each episode of ELEVATED was hosted on the personal channels of different OTK members, including co-owners Asmongold, Esfand, Emiru, and Sodapoppin. The partnership enhanced the visibility of the show, and its participating contestants, in a substantial way.

During each episode, hosts invited six streamers onto the livestream, where they presented the day’s challenges, which ranged from testing creativity to speaking capabilities and more. After learning about the challenge, each contestant presented to the judges, who then deliberated and voted, along with the help of viewers, who acted as the fourth judge by voting through a Twitch chat feature. The contestants who received two or more “no” votes were eliminated.

Impressively, viewers have already watched more than 965,000 hours of ELEVATED’s second seasonwith an average viewership of 624,000 viewers per episode. Notable statistics include:

  • 42,900 peak viewers

  • Over 100,000 hours watched on EsfandTV’s channel

  • Sodapoppin hit 108,000 hours watched, and ExtraEmily hit 106,000 hours watched during their respective broadcasts of the show

  • 713,000 chat messages

  • 33,000 active chatters during live broadcasts

With Twitch reporting 140 million monthly users, Allied Esports and OTK utilized the platform to spotlight smaller creators and introduce them to supportive audiences. The first season of ELEVATED premiered in 2022 and was hosted by The Botez Sisters on the ‘’ELEVATED AT ALLIED” Twitch channel.

ABOUT ALLIED GAMING & ENTERTAINMENT

Allied Gaming & Entertainment Inc. (Nasdaq: AGAE) is a global experiential entertainment company focused on providing a growing audience of gamers with unique experiences through renowned assets, products, and services. For more information, visit alliedgaming.gg.

ABOUT ALLIED ESPORTS

Allied Esports International Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary to Allied Gaming & Entertainment Inc. (Nasdaq: AGAE), owns and operates HyperX Arena Las Vegas, the world’s most recognized esports facility, and Allied Esports Trucks. The company offers a variety of esports and gaming-related content, including world class tournaments, live and virtual events, and original programming to continuously foster an engaged gaming community.

ABOUT ONE TRUE KING

One True King (OTK) is an award-winning media company owned by globally renowned gaming streamers Asmongold, Esfand, TipsOut, Sodapoppin, Emiru, Mizkif, and NMPLOL. Outside of daily gaming content & streaming, One True King focuses on pushing the boundaries of live streaming. OTK produces industry-leading live game shows, tournaments, in-real-life (IRL) streams, and podcasts, all tailored to millennial & Gen Z internet natives. OTK has quickly become the topmost-watched organization on Twitch, reaching over 35 million followers across social platforms globally and amassing tens of millions of hours watched every month.

Allied Esports

Hannah Hurlburt / Natalie Mounier

Kirvin Doak Communications

[email protected] / [email protected]

Investor Relations

Tyler Drew

[email protected]

OTK

The Story Mob

[email protected]

KEYWORDS: United States North America Nevada

INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Entertainment Sports eSports TV and Radio Online Mobile Entertainment Electronic Games

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At Beyond ‘23, Samsara Announces Innovations to Accelerate the Digital Transformation of Physical Operations and Reshape the Worker Experience

At Beyond ‘23, Samsara Announces Innovations to Accelerate the Digital Transformation of Physical Operations and Reshape the Worker Experience

Gathering connected operations leaders at its customer conference, Samsara unveils digital-first tools to empower the people who power the world

AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Today, at its Beyond conference, Samsara Inc. (“Samsara”) (NYSE: IOT), announced product innovations designed to reshape the worker experience for organizations managing complex physical operations. The conference, which runs June 21-23 in Austin, Texas, is one of the largest gatherings of leaders and innovators across physical operations – a wide range of industries all powered by frontline workforces who are vital to keeping the global economy running. The digital-first tools showcased by Samsara today – from Virtual Coach, a new coaching aid that reaches drivers when and where they need it, to Mobile Experience Management, a lifeline for workers in the field to get help from the back office – empower employees with personalized, connected, and integrated experiences to help them operate more safely and efficiently.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230622311179/en/

Samsara Beyond 2023 (Graphic: Business Wire)

Samsara Beyond 2023 (Graphic: Business Wire)

“We have had tremendous momentum as our AI-powered platform drives real business impact for our customers,” said Sanjit Biswas, CEO and co-founder of Samsara. “Our customers’ frontline workers keep the world running – from the construction crews and field service technicians, to loading dock workers and truck drivers. With ongoing labor shortages and the next generation of the workforce demanding digital tools, we are helping make these jobs easier, safer, and more efficient. The next wave of digital transformation is happening now.”

Empowering workers with personalized, connected, and integrated experiences

Serving tens of thousands of organizations across North America and Europe, Samsara’s customer base crosses a diverse set of industries and includes many of the world’s biggest construction, transportation, waste management, and wholesale and retail companies. Samsara’s Connected Operations™ Cloud is already contributing dramatic improvements to workers in these industries – using AI to prevent over 120,000 crashes in 2022 alone, and digitizing more than 23 million documents to save thousands of hours of paperwork. Today, Samsara has announced new innovations that continue reshaping the worker experience and driving results, which include:

  • Mobile Experience Management (MEM): Workers doing demanding jobs in the field need mobile devices to be a lifeline, not a distraction. MEM isa software solution that simplifies mobile management at scale so workers stay safe, connected, and productive. With MEM, employees can get customized support – like remote training and live troubleshooting – through their mobile devices, all while keeping them safe by reducing unnecessary digital distractions.
  • Virtual Coach: Improving road safety requires timely insights to inform the coaching of risky driving behavior. Instead of drivers having to wait for in-person feedback, Virtual Coach empowers them to self-coach directly from the Samsara Driver App anywhere, anytime. This makes it easy for managers to personalize coaching experiences at scale, improving both road safety as well as driver engagement and retention.
  • Smart Trailer and Asset Tracking solutions: Powerful insights from trailers and assets – such as utilization, temperature, and location – are hard to act upon when they live in siloed systems. With next-generation Asset Gateways, Samsara can connect and extend this visibility to drive better outcomes. The new Find My Asset featureallowsmanagers to quickly find lost or stolen high-value unpowered assets – saving substantial time and money. In addition, a new two-way cloud integration with Thermo King’s TracKing® Telematics makes it possible for customers to not only monitor, but remotely control, their Thermo King reefers from the Samsara dashboard.
  • Data Connectors: Driving better business outcomes is challenging when your data lives in separate, third-party platforms that aren’t able to work together. With new data connectors including Fivetran, Kafka, and Power BI, Samsara data is easily streamed to power business applications and workflows. This holistic visibility empowers everyone within your organization to make data-driven decisions and improve the bottom line.

“We know that data is essential in today’s environment to drive better business outcomes – whether that’s lowering emissions, preventing accidents, or automating workflows. Empowering the people within your organization with the right digital tools is critical to achieving these outcomes,” explained Jeff Hausman, Chief Product Officer at Samsara. “All of our announcements made today are reshaping this worker experience for customers and enabling them to achieve meaningful digital transformation of physical operations, now.”

Mobile Experience Management is now available for purchase in early access for customers across the U.S. and Canada. Virtual Coach is now available in beta for global customers. To learn more about these and other announcements at Beyond ‘23, visit the Samsara blog here.

Announcing Samsara Ventures: Investment fund to fuel innovation across connected operations ecosystem

Also at Beyond ‘23, Biswas announced Samsara Ventures – a new investment fund to support visionary companies building innovative solutions throughout the connected operations ecosystem. Samsara Ventures focuses on portfolio companies that are aligned with Samsara’s mission to increase the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of the operations that power the global economy. Along with monetary investments, Samsara Ventures will provide mentorship from Samsara’s leadership team, access to Samsara’s community of customers and ecosystem partners, and the unique opportunity to build and scale solutions in connection with Samsara’s Connected Operations Cloud.

“Physical operations industries are the backbone of our economy, and Samsara has been innovating from the start to help these organizations succeed,” said Biswas. “We’re excited to extend our commitment to the connected operations ecosystem with Samsara Ventures. Beyond investing in industry-wide innovation, we also recognize how valuable these advancements can be for our customers, who are often looking for solutions to many of the challenges these companies are solving for.”

For more on Samsara Ventures, including an overview of initial investment companies, visit: https://www.samsara.com/samsara-ventures/

Follow Beyond ‘23 news and developments on Samsara’s LinkedIn and Twitter pages, or by using the #SamsaraBeyond hashtag.

About Samsara

Samsara (NYSE: IOT) is the pioneer of the Connected Operations™ Cloud, which is a platform that enables organizations that depend on physical operations to harness Internet of Things (IoT) data to develop actionable insights and improve their operations. Samsara operates in North America and Europe and serves tens of thousands of customers across a wide range of industries including transportation, wholesale and retail trade, construction, field services, logistics, utilities and energy, government, healthcare and education, manufacturing, and food and beverage. The company’s mission is to increase the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of the operations that power the global economy.

Samsara is a registered trademark of Samsara Inc. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

Andie Rodriguez

Samsara

[email protected]

KEYWORDS: Ireland United States United Kingdom Canada North America Europe Texas

INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Data Management IOT (Internet of Things) Apps/Applications Technology Software Internet

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Samsara Beyond 2023 (Graphic: Business Wire)

New Relic Instant Observability Ecosystem Crosses 650 Integrations

New Relic Instant Observability Ecosystem Crosses 650 Integrations

New Relic has grown the industry’s largest open-source integration ecosystem by 30% in six months to help every engineer embrace observability in minutes; expands out-of-the-box monitoring solutions for cloud services, open source tools, and enterprise technologies

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–New Relic (NYSE: NEWR), the all-in-one observability platform for every engineer, has expanded the industry’s largest open source integration ecosystem, New Relic Instant Observability to further democratize access to observability across the software stack. The company has grown its partnerships by 30% in six months, and now offers integrations with over 650 cloud services, open-source tools, and enterprise technologies. New Relic is rapidly growing its integration ecosystem to help new users monitor systems and applications faster, and allow existing users to get more value out of New Relic and centralize their monitoring. New quickstarts have been added to the catalog from popular developer tools such as Microsoft Azure, Vercel, Jenkins, and GitLabs.

“Partnering with New Relic, and building on open standards like OpenTelemetry, significantly amplifies the capabilities for easier collection, seamless instrumentation, and comprehensive monitoring of serverless applications, including making this process easier for popular frontend frameworks like Next.js,” said Vercel Vice President of Developer Experience Lee Robinson.

According to the New Relic Observability Forecast report, most organizations expect to have robust observability practices in place by 2025; the adoption of open-source technologies, such as OpenTelemetry, is cited as one of the most common trends driving the need for observability (39%). In addition, software engineers need to go beyond just ingesting their data into their system—they also need insights on monitoring best practices. The latest integrations added to Instant Observability provide native visibility into supported cloud services and OpenTelemetry data sources with opinionated, pre-built observability views. This makes it easy for engineers to instrument tools, visualize how requests flow through their distributed systems, and understand software dependencies for ease of troubleshooting.

“We continue to invest in the expansion of our open ecosystem and multi-cloud to help engineers grow their observability practices alongside the tools they use every day,” said New Relic Chief Product Officer Manav Khurana. “We are deepening our commitment to open standards and continuing to work with world-class tools, technologies, and cloud providers to help every engineer build a mature observability practice with New Relic.”

Key integrations include:

  • Azure services provide native visibility into cloud services and their relationship with the system. Building on the Azure Native New Relic Service, 100+ Azure quickstarts include Azure IoT Hub, Azure Data Explorer, Azure Web Apps, Azure Cognitive Services, and their related services.
  • AI and ML models, such as OpenAI GPT, that leverage open APIs to monitor application usage, reduce costs, and achieve better machine learning model performance.
  • Front-end development platforms such as Vercel for streaming and analyzing traces from Serverless Functions with OpenTelemetry to optimize web app performance and reliability.
  • CI/CD and DevOps platforms that visualize jobs and pipeline executions as distributed traces with logs in context to pinpoint issues. Key integrations include Jenkins and GitLab.
  • Prometheus, a popular open-source Kubernetes monitoring tool for cluster performance. Notable integrations utilizing the open toolkit include CoreDNS, Etcd, Istio, and Argo.

Instant Observability is part of New Relic’s generous free pricing tier to help every engineer get started without talking to sales or providing a credit card. Additional resources:

About New Relic

As a leader in observability, New Relic empowers engineers with a data-driven approach to planning, building, deploying, and running great software. New Relic delivers the only unified data platform that empowers engineers to get all telemetry—metrics, events, logs, and traces—paired with powerful full stack analysis tools to help engineers do their best work with data, not opinions. Delivered through the industry’s first usage-based consumption pricing that’s intuitive and predictable, New Relic gives engineers more value for the money by helping improve planning cycle times, change failure rates, release frequency, and mean time to resolution. This helps the world’s leading brands including adidas Runtastic, American Red Cross, Australia Post, Banco Inter, Chegg, GoTo Group, Ryanair, Sainsbury’s, Signify Health, TopGolf, and World Fuel Services (WFS) improve uptime, reliability, and operational efficiency to deliver exceptional customer experiences that fuel innovation and growth. www.newrelic.com.

Media Contact

Elena Keamy

New Relic, Inc.

[email protected]

Investor Contact

Ingo Friedrichowitz

New Relic, Inc.

[email protected]

KEYWORDS: United States North America California

INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Apps/Applications Technology Engineering Manufacturing Software Networks Internet Data Management Artificial Intelligence

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Aurora Supercomputer Blade Installation Complete

Aurora Supercomputer Blade Installation Complete

The installation of Aurora’s 10,624 blades containing the Intel Max Series product family marks a major milestone for exascale computing.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC):

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230622628670/en/

On June 22, 2023, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel and HPE announced that the installation progress of the Aurora Supercomputer is complete. In this photo, members of the installation team walk through the many racks at Argonne National Laboratory. (Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)

On June 22, 2023, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel and HPE announced that the installation progress of the Aurora Supercomputer is complete. In this photo, members of the installation team walk through the many racks at Argonne National Laboratory. (Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)

​What’s New: The Aurora supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory is now fully equipped with all 10,624 compute blades, boasting 63,744 Intel® Data Center GPU Max Series and 21,248 Intel® Xeon® CPU Max Series processors.

“Aurora is the first deployment of Intel’s Max Series GPU, the biggest Xeon Max CPU-based system, and the largest GPU cluster in the world. We’re proud to be part of this historic system and excited for the groundbreaking AI, science and engineering Aurora will enable.”

—Jeff McVeigh, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the Super Compute Group

What Aurora Is: A collaboration of Intel, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and the Department of Energy (DOE), the Aurora supercomputer is designed to unlock the potential of the three pillars of high performance computing (HPC): simulations, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) on an extremely large scale. The system incorporates more than 1,024 storage nodes (using DAOS, Intel’s distributed asynchronous object storage), providing 220 terabytes (TB) of capacity at 31TBs of total bandwidth, and leverages the HPE Slingshot high-performance fabric. Later this year, Aurora is expected to be the world’s first supercomputer to achieve a theoretical peak performance of more than 2 exaflops (an exaflop is 1018 or a billion billion operations per second) when it enters the TOP500 list.

Aurora will harness the full power of the Intel Max Series GPU and CPU product family. Designed to meet the demands of dynamic and emerging HPC and AI workloads, early results with the Max Series GPUs demonstrate leading performance on real-world science and engineering workloads, showcasing up to 2 times the performance of AMD MI250X GPUs on OpenMC, and near linear scaling up to hundreds of nodes.1 The Intel Xeon Max Series CPU drives a 40% performance advantage over the competition in many real-world HPC workloads, such as earth systems modeling, energy and manufacturing.2

Why It Matters: From tackling climate change to finding cures for deadly diseases, researchers face monumental challenges that demand advanced computing technologies at scale. Aurora is poised to address the needs of the HPC and AI communities, providing the necessary tools to push the boundaries of scientific exploration.

“While we work toward acceptance testing, we’re going to be using Aurora to train some large-scale open source generative AI models for science,” said Rick Stevens, Argonne National Laboratory associate laboratory director. “Aurora, with over 60,000 Intel Max GPUs, a very fast I/O system, and an all-solid-state mass storage system, is the perfect environment to train these models.”

How It Works: At the heart of this state-of-the-art system are Aurora’s sleek rectangular blades, housing processors, memory, networking and cooling technologies. Each blade consists of two Intel Xeon Max Series CPUs and six Intel Max Series GPUs. The Xeon Max Series product family is already demonstrating great early performance on Sunspot, the test bed and development system with the same architecture as Aurora. Developers are utilizing oneAPI and AI tools to accelerate HPC and AI workloads and enhance code portability across multiple architectures.

The installation of these blades has been a delicate operation, with each 70-pound blade requiring specialized machinery to be vertically integrated into Aurora’s refrigerator-sized racks. The system’s 166 racks accommodate 64 blades each and span eight rows, occupying a space equivalent to two professional basketball courts in the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) data center.

Researchers from the ALCF’s Aurora Early Science Program (ESP) and DOE’s Exascale Computing Project will migrate their work from the Sunspot test bed to the fully installed Aurora. This transition will allow them to scale their applications on the full system. Early users will stress test the supercomputer and identify potential bugs that need to be resolved before deployment. This includes efforts to develop generative AI models for science, recently announced at the ISC’23 conference.

More context:A Sneak Peek Inside Intel’s Supercomputing Lab (Video) | Intel Dives into the Future of Cooling | Broad, Open HPC+AI Portfolio Powers Performance, Generative AI for Science | Intel Data Center GPU Max Series (Product Brief) | Intel Xeon CPU Max Series (Product Brief) | Aurora: HPC and AI at Exascale, Blade Video (Intel Vision 2022)

About Intel

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is an industry leader, creating world-changing technology that enables global progress and enriches lives. Inspired by Moore’s Law, we continuously work to advance the design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address our customers’ greatest challenges. By embedding intelligence in the cloud, network, edge and every kind of computing device, we unleash the potential of data to transform business and society for the better. To learn more about Intel’s innovations, go to newsroom.intel.com and intel.com.

Disclaimers and configuration:

Intel does not control or audit third-party data. You should consult other sources to evaluate accuracy.

1 Sunspot, Intel® Data Center GPU Max 1550: Testing as of 5/12/2023 by Argonne National Laboratory. Each Node: 2x 52C Intel® Xeon® Max CPU, 6x Intel® Data Center GPU Max Polaris, NVIDIA A100: Testing as of 5/12/2023 by Argonne National Laboratory. Each Node: 1x AMD EPYC Milan, 4x NVIDIA A100 40G PCIe Crusher, AMD Instinct MI250X: Testing as of 5/12/2023 by Argonne National Laboratory. Each Node: 1x Optimized 3rd Gen AMD EPYC, 4x AMD Instinct MI250X Intel does not control or audit third-party data. You should consult other sources to evaluate accuracy.

2 Geomean of 5 workloads [HPCG, NEMO-GYRE, Anelastic Wave Propagation, BlackScholes, OpenFOAM]

  • HPCG

    • Intel Configuration: 1-node, 2x Intel® Xeon® Max 9480, HT On, Turbo On, SNC4, Total Memory 128 GB (8x16GB HBM2 3200MT/s), BIOS Version SE5C7411.86B.8424.D03.2208100444, ucode revision=0x2c000020, CentOS Stream 8, Linux version 5.19.0-rc6.0712.intel_next.1.x86_64+server, HPCG from MKL_v2022.1.0. Test by Intel as of 9/2/2022. O AMD Configuration: 1-node, 2x AMD EPYC 9654, HT On, Turbo On, CTDP=360W, NPS=4, 1536GB DDR5-4800, BIOS 1.2, microcode 0xa101111, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7, Kernel 4.18, AMD official binary. Test by Intel as of 03/27/23.

  • NEMO-GYRE

    • Intel Configuration: 1-node, 2x Intel® Xeon® Max 9480, HT ON, Turbo ON, NUMA configuration SNC4, Total Memory 128 GB (HBM2e at 3200 MHz), BIOS Version SE5C7411.86B.8424.D03.2208100444, ucode revision=0x2c000020, CentOS Stream 8, Linux version 5.19.0-rc6.0712.intel_next.1.x86_64+server, NEMO v4.2 build with Intel® Fortran Compiler Classic and Intel® MPI from 2022.3 Intel® oneAPI HPC Toolkit with compiler flags “-i4 -r8 -O3 -fno-alias -march=core-avx2 – fp-model fast=2 -no-prec-div -no-prec-sqrt -align array64byte -fimf-usesvml=true”. Test by Intel as of 10/12/2022. o AMD Configuration: 1-node, 2x AMD EPYC 9654, HT On, Turbo On, CTDP=360W, NPS=4, 1536GB DDR5-4800, BIOS 1.2, microcode 0xa101111, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7, Kernel 4.18, NEMO version 4.2 compiled with Intel® Fortran Compiler Classic and Intel® MPI from 2022.3 Intel® oneAPI HPC Toolkit with compiler flags “-O3 -xCORE-AVX2”. Test by Intel as of 03/27/23.

  • Anelastic Wave Propagation

    • Intel Configuration: 1-node, 2x Intel® Xeon® Max 9480, HT On, Turbo On, SNC4, 128 GB HBM2e, BIOS Version SE5C7411.86B.8424.D03.2208100444, ucode Performance Footnotes revision=0x2c000020, CentOS Stream 8, Linux version 5.19, YASK v3.05.07 . Test by Intel as of 9/2/2022. o AMD Configuration: 1-node, 2x AMD EPYC 9654, HT On, Turbo On, CTDP=360W, NPS=4, 1536GB DDR5-4800, BIOS 1.2, microcode 0xa101111, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7, Kernel 4.18, YASK v3.05.07. Test by Intel as of 03/27/23.

  • BlackScholes

    • Intel Configuration: 1-node, 2x Intel® Xeon® Max 9480,HT On, Turbo On, SNC4, Total Memory 128 GB (8x16GB HBM2 3200MT/s), BIOS Version SE5C7411.86B.8424.D03.2208100444, ucode revision=0x2c000020, CentOS Stream 8, Linux version 5.19.0-rc6.0712.intel_next.1.x86_64+server, Black Scholes v1.4. Test by Intel as of 9/2/2022. o AMD Configuration: 1-node, 2x AMD EPYC 9654, HT On, Turbo On, CTDP=360W, NPS=4, 1536GB DDR5-4800, BIOS 1.2, microcode 0xa101111, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7, Kernel 4.18, Black Scholes v1.4. Test by Intel as of 03/27/23.

  • OpenFOAM

    • This offering is not approved or endorsed by OpenCFD Limited, producer and distributor of the OpenFOAM software via www.openfoam.com, and owner of the OPENFOAM® and OpenCFD® trademark

    • Intel Configuration: 1-node, 2x Intel® Xeon® Max 9480, HT On, Turbo On, SNC4, Total Memory 128 GB (8x16GB HBM2 3200MT/s), BIOS Version SE5C7411.86B.8424.D03.2208100444, ucode revision=0x2c000020, CentOS Stream 8, Linux version 5.19.0-rc6.0712.intel_next.1.x86_64+server, OpenFOAM 8, Motorbike 20M @ 250 iterations, Motorbike 42M @ 250 iterations. Test by Intel as of 9/2/2022. o AMD Configuration: 1-node, 2x AMD EPYC 9654, HT On, Turbo On, CTDP=360W, NPS=4, 1536GB DDR5-4800, BIOS 1.2, microcode 0xa101111, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7, Kernel 4.18, OpenFOAM 8, Motorbike 20M @ 250 iterations, Motorbike 42M @ 250 iterations. Test by Intel as of 03/27/23.

© Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Bats Jafferji

1-603-809-5145

[email protected]

KEYWORDS: United States North America California

INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Data Analytics Hardware Artificial Intelligence Engineering Professional Services Technology Semiconductor Manufacturing

MEDIA:

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On June 22, 2023, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel and HPE announced that the installation progress of the Aurora Supercomputer is complete. In this photo, members of the installation team walk through the many racks at Argonne National Laboratory. (Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)
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On June 22, 2023, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel and HPE announced that the installation progress of the Aurora Supercomputer is complete. In this photo, the installation team discusses progress over an open blade. (Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)
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On June 22, 2023, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel and HPE announced that the installation progress of the Aurora Supercomputer is complete. In this photo, a member of the installation team brings in the last blade on a specialized trolley. (Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)
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On June 22, 2023, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel and HPE announced that the installation progress of the Aurora Supercomputer is complete. In this photo, a member of the installation team places the last blade. (Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)
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On June 22, 2023, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel and HPE announced that the installation progress of the Aurora Supercomputer is complete. In this photo, the installation team celebrates all 10,624 blades installed together in front of the Aurora Supercomputer. (Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)
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On June 22, 2023, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel and HPE announced that the installation progress of the Aurora Supercomputer is complete. In this photo, the installation team poses together in front of the Aurora Supercomputer. (Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)

Locafy Announces Receipt of Nasdaq Listing Determination; Company to Request Hearing

PERTH, Australia, June 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Locafy Limited (Nasdaq: LCFY, LCFYW) (“Locafy” or the “Company”), a globally recognized software-as-a-service technology company specializing in local search engine marketing, today announced today announced that on June 21, 2023, the Company received notice from the Listing Qualifications Staff (the “Staff”) of the Nasdaq Capital Market (“Nasdaq”) indicating that, based upon the Company’s continued non-compliance with Nasdaq’s minimum stockholders’ equity requirement of at least $2.5 million under Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(b)(1), as of June 30, 2023, the Company’s securities would be subject to delisting unless the Company timely requests a hearing before the Nasdaq Hearings Panel (the “Panel”). Further, as of June 21, 2023, the Company did not meet the alternative compliance standards relating to the market value of listed securities of $35 million or net income from continuing operations of $500,000 in the most recently completed fiscal year or in two of the last three most recently completed fiscal years.

On May 5, 2023, May 18, 2023 and June 12, 2023, the Company submitted a plan and supporting documentation to regain compliance with the minimum stockholders’ equity requirement.

The Staff notified the Company by letter dated June 21, 2023, that it determined that the Company did not provide definitive agreements or sales contracts in support of its financial projections as related to its cost cutting measures and that plans relying on future projected revenues to comply with the equity requirement are generally not accepted unless the Company has definitive contracts and the revenue will be received in the near term. The Staff also determined that it found no support for assuming profitability or a tax asset being accretive to equity absent definitive agreements. Finally, the Staff determined that although the Company plans an equity infusion through an ATM offering, the amount and timing of any equity raise is uncertain, and in and of itself, the ATM offering will not be enough to restore the Company to compliance.

The Company will have until June 28, 2023 to request a hearing. The Company plans to timely request a hearing, which request will stay any further action by the Staff at least pending the issuance of the Panel’s decision following the hearing and the expiration of any extension that may be granted by the Panel. At the hearing, the Company will present its plan to evidence compliance with the minimum stockholders’ equity requirement for continued listing on Nasdaq, and request an extension of time within which to do so. The Company’s ordinary shares and warrants will continue to trade on Nasdaq under the symbols “LCFY” and “LCFYW”, respectively, at least pending the ultimate conclusion of the hearing process.

About Locafy Limited

Founded in 2009, Locafy’s (Nasdaq: LCFY, LCFYW) mission is to revolutionize the US$700 billion SEO sector. Locafy helps businesses and brands increase search engine relevance and prominence in a specific proximity using a fast, easy, and automated approach. For more information, please visit www.locafy.com.


Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains “forward-looking statements” that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release may be identified by the use of words such as “subject to”, “believe,” “anticipate,” “plan,” “expect,” “intend,” “estimate,” “project,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “would,” “could,” “can,” the negatives thereof, variations thereon and similar expressions, or by discussions of strategy, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, they do involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, and these expectations may prove to be incorrect. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company’s actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including those discussed in the Company’s periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on its website (


http://www.sec.gov


). All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors. Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements.

Investor Contact:

Tom Colton or Chris Adusei-Poku
Gateway Investor Relations
949-574-3860
[email protected]



UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Arizona Awarded NCQA’s Health Plan Accreditation and Long-Term Services & Supports Distinction

UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Arizona Awarded NCQA’s Health Plan Accreditation and Long-Term Services & Supports Distinction

Recognition demonstrates UnitedHealthcare’s commitment to high-quality, person-centered care

PHOENIX–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Arizona has been awarded the industry-recognized Health Plan Accreditation and Long-Term Services and Supports (LTSS) Distinction by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations and manages the evolution of HEDIS®, the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care.

UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Arizona earned NCQA Health Plan Accreditation by meeting rigorous requirements for consumer protection and quality improvement. The health plan is evaluated based on several standards, including quality management and improvement; population health management; network management; utilization management; credentialing and recredentialing; members’ rights and responsibilities; member connections; and Medicaid benefits and services.

“We are honored that NCQA has recognized our commitment to health care quality as we continue to focus on helping our members live their healthiest lives,” said Jean Kalbacher, CEO of UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Arizona. “Most importantly, receiving this accreditation underscores our commitment to continue offering access to high-quality, affordable health care that meets the needs of Arizonans and state partners alike.”

NCQA’s LTSS Distinction, given to UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Arizona, is awarded to organizations that deliver efficient, effective person-centered care that meets people’s needs, helps keep people in their preferred setting and aligns with state requirements. NCQA’s LTSS Distinction helps support health plans that provide managed health services and coordinate social services for LTSS members.

The LTSS Distinction is based on areas including, but not limited to: person-centered care planning; care transitions; coordination of services; a critical incident management system; and qualifications and assistance for LTSS providers.

UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Arizona is dedicated to expanding community access and support of high-quality care across Arizona through strong provider relationships and targeted investments with community partners including:

  • A $3 million grant by the United Health Foundation to Valle del Sol Community Health to provide mobile units to help improve access to integrated health care in underserved communities.

  • An $800,000 grant to the Brighter Way Institute to build and deploy a mobile dental clinic that travels to low-income areas to provide no-cost dental screenings and preventive services to insured and uninsured children, adults, people experiencing homelessness and veterans.

  • An $800,000 investment in the March of Dimes for the Phoenix area’s first March of Dimes Mom & Baby Mobile Health Center™, a mobile unit that will provide maternal care in Maricopa County and surrounding communities.

  • A $90,000 donation to fund the American Heart Association’s Community Health Worker Training, which provides education, guidance and resources to community health workers delivering care in Arizona.

UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Arizona serves more than 500,000 members in Arizona’s Medicaid, long-term care and developmental disabilities program, the most of any Medicaid health plan in Arizona. The recent recognitions by NCQA demonstrate UnitedHealthcare’s continued leadership in delivering high-quality health care and improved member outcomes among Arizona’s growing Medicaid and long-term care populations.

For more information about NCQA, visit www.ncqa.org.

About NCQA

NCQA is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations. It also recognizes clinicians and practices in key areas of performance. NCQA’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. In recognition for its leadership in diversity, equity and inclusion, NCQA has won the Excellence in Diversity Award from the Chesapeake Human Resources Association. NCQA’s website (ncqa.org) contains information to help consumers, employers and others make more-informed health care choices. NCQA can be found online at ncqa.org, on Twitter @ncqa, and on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/ncqa.

About UnitedHealthcare

UnitedHealthcare is dedicated to helping people live healthier lives and making the health system work better for everyone by simplifying the health care experience, meeting consumer health and wellness needs, and sustaining trusted relationships with care providers. In the United States, UnitedHealthcare offers the full spectrum of health benefit programs for individuals, employers, and Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, and contracts directly with more than 1.5 million physicians and care professionals, and 7,000 hospitals and other care facilities nationwide. The company also provides health benefits and delivers care to people through owned and operated health care facilities in South America. UnitedHealthcare is one of the businesses of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a diversified health care company. For more information, visit UnitedHealthcare at www.uhc.com or follow @UHC on Twitter.

UHC Media Contact:

Jon Fenech, 763-361-1127

[email protected]

KEYWORDS: Arizona United States North America

INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Women Men Health Insurance Philanthropy Family Managed Care Fund Raising Consumer Health Foundation

MEDIA:

Pembina Pipeline Corporation Announces Closing of $500 Million Public Note Offering

Pembina Pipeline Corporation Announces Closing of $500 Million Public Note Offering

CALGARY, Alberta–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Pembina Pipeline Corporation (“Pembina” or the “Company”) (TSX: PPL; NYSE: PBA) is pleased to announce that it has closed its previously announced offering of $500 million of senior unsecured medium-term notes (the “Offering”). The Offering was conducted in three tranches consisting of $300 million principal amount of senior unsecured medium-term notes, series 19 (the “Series 19 Notes”) having a fixed coupon of 5.72% per annum, paid semi-annually, and maturing on June 22, 2026; $100 million principal amount issued through a re-opening of the Company’s senior unsecured medium-term notes, series 5 (the “Series 5 Notes”) having a fixed coupon of 3.54% per annum, paid semi-annually, and maturing on February 3, 2025;and$100 million principal amount issued through a re-opening of the Company’s senior unsecured medium-term notes, series 6 (the “Series 6 Notes”) having a fixed coupon of 4.24% per annum, paid semi-annually, and maturing on June 15, 2027. The gross proceeds of the Offering were approximately $493 million.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230622672979/en/

The net proceeds of the Offering are anticipated to be used to repay indebtedness of the Company under its unsecured $1.5 billion revolving credit facility, as well as for general corporate purposes.

The Series 19 Notes and the re-opened Series 5 Notes and Series 6 Notes were offered through a syndicate of dealers under Pembina’s short-form base shelf prospectus dated November 29, 2021, as supplemented by related pricing supplements dated June 20, 2023.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the notes in any jurisdiction. The notes being offered have not been approved or disapproved by any regulatory authority. The notes have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or any state securities law, and may not be offered or sold within the United States.

About Pembina

Pembina Pipeline Corporation is a leading energy transportation and midstream service provider that has served North America’s energy industry for more than 65 years. Pembina owns an integrated network of hydrocarbon liquids and natural gas pipelines, gas gathering and processing facilities, oil and natural gas liquids infrastructure and logistics services, and a growing export terminals business. Through our integrated value chain, we seek to provide safe and reliable infrastructure solutions which connect producers and consumers of energy across the world, support a more sustainable future and benefit our customers, investors, employees and communities. For more information, please visit www.pembina.com.

Purpose of Pembina: We deliver extraordinary energy solutions so the world can thrive.

Pembina is structured into three Divisions: Pipelines Division, Facilities Division and Marketing & New Ventures Division.

Pembina’s common shares trade on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges under PPL and PBA, respectively. For more information, visit www.pembina.com.

Forward-Looking Information and Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements and information (collectively, “forward-looking statements”) within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of applicable securities legislation that are based on Pembina’s current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as “anticipate”, “intend”, “will”, “shall”, and similar expressions suggesting future events or future performance.

In particular, this news release contains forward-looking statements relating to the Offering, including the anticipated use of the net proceeds of the Offering. These forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions that Pembina has made in respect thereof as at the date of this news release, including: oil and gas industry exploration and development activity levels and the geographic region of such activity; that favourable market conditions exist; the success of Pembina’s operations; prevailing commodity prices, interest rates, carbon prices, tax rates and exchange rates; the ability of Pembina to maintain current credit ratings; the availability of capital to fund future capital requirements relating to existing assets and projects; future operating costs; geotechnical and integrity costs; that all required regulatory and environmental approvals can be obtained on the necessary terms in a timely manner; prevailing regulatory, tax and environmental laws and regulations; maintenance of operating margins; and certain other assumptions in respect of Pembina’s forward-looking statements detailed in Pembina’s Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2022 (the “AIF”) and Management’s Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2022 (the “Annual MD&A”), which were each filed on SEDAR on February 23, 2023, in Pembina’s Management’s Discussion and Analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2023 (the “Interim MD&A”), which was filed on SEDAR on May 4, 2023, and from time to time in Pembina’s public disclosure documents available at www.sedar.com, www.sec.gov and through Pembina’s website at www.pembina.com.

These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to: the regulatory environment and decisions and Indigenous and landowner consultation requirements; the impact of competitive entities and pricing; reliance on third parties to successfully operate and maintain certain assets; the strength and operations of the oil and natural gas production industry and related commodity prices; nonperformance or default by counterparties to agreements which Pembina or one or more of its affiliates has entered into in respect of its business; actions by governmental or regulatory authorities; the ability of Pembina to acquire or develop the necessary infrastructure in respect of future development projects; fluctuations in operating results; adverse general economic and market conditions in Canada, North America and worldwide; the ability to access various sources of debt and equity capital; changes in credit ratings; counterparty credit risk; and certain other risks and uncertainties detailed in the AIF, Annual MD&A, Interim MD&A and from time to time in Pembina’s public disclosure documents available at www.sedar.com, www.sec.gov and through Pembina’s website at www.pembina.com. In addition, the closing of the Offering may not be completed, or may be delayed, if the conditions to the closing of the Offering are not satisfied on the anticipated timeline or at all. Accordingly, there is a risk that the Offering will not be completed within the anticipated time, on the terms currently proposed, or at all. The intended use of the net proceeds of the Offering by Pembina may change if the board of directors of Pembina determines that it would be in the best interests of Pembina to deploy the proceeds for some other purpose and there can be no guarantee as to how or when such proceeds may be used.

Accordingly, readers are cautioned that events or circumstances could cause results to differ materially from those predicted, forecasted or projected. Such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by the above statements. Pembina does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or information contained herein, except as required by applicable laws.

For further information:

Investor Relations

(403) 231-3156

1-855-880-7404

e-mail: [email protected]

www.pembina.com

KEYWORDS: North America Canada

INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Finance Oil/Gas Energy Professional Services Utilities

MEDIA:

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SmileDirectClub and DC Attorney General Settle Dispute

Oral Care Innovator Leads Orthodontic Industry In Taking Further Steps to Increase Customer Transparency

NASHVILLE, Tenn., June 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — SmileDirectClub, Inc. (NASDAQ: SDC), the oral care leader and creator of the first med tech platform for teeth straightening, announced today it has reached an agreement with the Office of District of Columbia Attorney General (AG) Brian L. Schwalb, to resolve the litigation brought by the AG’s Office against SmileDirectClub, falsely alleging that it stifled consumer reviews by requiring consumers to agree to a confidentiality clause in order to obtain a prorated refund for those customers wishing to return aligners after 30 days.

“SmileDirectClub has always believed transparency is key to building trust with its customers, and that’s why we were the first company in the teeth straightening industry to give consumers the pricing transparency and accessibility they deserve,” Chief Legal Officer, Susan Greenspon Rammelt said. “For too long there has been a misinformation campaign claiming SmileDirectClub stifles negative consumer feedback through the use of non-disclosure agreements. While we were disappointed this misinformation caused the District of Columbia to file its complaint, we are pleased to set the record straight and work with the District of Columbia’s Office of the Attorney General in its efforts to create new policy for the industry and increase customer transparency.”

SmileDirectClub does not require customers to execute a release or any form of non-disclosure before or during treatment or in order for a customer to retain a prorated refund. When a customer seeks a refund outside of the Lifetime Smile Guarantee, that form of release is modeled on a release form historically used in the industry. Given the infrequent use of the general release form (GRF) by SmileDirectClub over the years and the ongoing misinformation campaign, the Company already had plans to tailor the non-disclosure provision more narrowly in its GRF. This litigation gave the Company an opportunity to address both that campaign and the lawsuit at the same time.

“We are proud of our products and services, and customer satisfaction has been and will continue to be our North Star,” Greenspon Rammelt said. “As the District of Columbia enforces its newly developing policy to limit the use of non-disclosure provisions, even in general forms of release, across the dental industry, we encourage the rest of the orthodontic industry to follow our example as a leader in consumer transparency and embrace honest reviews and feedback from consumers in digital forums.”

SmileDirectClub was founded in 2014 with the mission of making premium oral care accessible, affordable, and convenient for everyone. The Company has helped more than two million people around the globe achieve the confidence that comes with a smile they love through its innovative telehealth platform for teeth straightening.

About SmileDirectClub

SmileDirectClub, Inc. (Nasdaq: SDC) (“SmileDirectClub”) is an oral care company and creator of the first medtech platform for teeth straightening. Through its cutting-edge telehealth technology and vertically integrated model, SmileDirectClub is revolutionizing the oral care industry. SmileDirectClub’s mission is to democratize access to a smile each and every person loves by making it affordable and convenient for everyone. SmileDirectClub is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. For more information, please visit SmileDirectClub.com.

Media Relations:
[email protected]