Newsdesk, Author at Market Newsdesk

November 11, 2020 4:27 pm

Lindblad Expeditions Holdings, Inc. Appoints David Goodman As Chief Commercial And Marketing Officer

PR Newswire

NEW YORK, Nov. 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Lindblad Expeditions Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: LIND) (“Lindblad” or the “Company”), a global provider of expedition cruises and adventure travel experiences, announced today it has named David Goodman as its Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer, effective November 9, 2020.

David has spent 30+ years running divisions of global multi-media organizations, overseeing revenue, marketing, content creation, production, product/technology, distribution and oversight of some of the world’s most recognizable brands and properties. Most recently he served as Executive Vice President, Marketing and Digital Development at Sotheby’s, where he and his team were responsible for numerous initiatives which resulted in record growth in audience (physical/digital), revenue, e-commerce sales, content creation (web, mobile, social, video, print, AR/VR) while incorporating best-in-class technology into client-facing products and processes.

Under his leadership, David was the chief architect of Sotheby’s highly successful digital strategy, which resulted in record online traffic; the creation of a global and “mobile first,” discovery, registration, bidding and buying platform; a global publishing and content creation/audience platform; and apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android phone, Amazon Fire, Samsung Smart TV, and Apple TV (named one of Apple’s “Best New Apps” when launched). He also created the award winning “Treasures From Chatsworth,” a 13-part series and live exhibition; new sales categories, and the creation and implementation of sophisticated internal/external advertising, insight and analytics programs.

Goodman came to Sotheby’s from The Madison Square Garden Company, where he was the President of Productions and Live Entertainment. Prior to his role at MSG, he spent 13 years at CBS in several roles, including President of CBS Live Experiences, President of CBS Interactive Music Group and President of Digital Media and Integrated Marketing for CBS Radio. David has also served as an executive at Warner Bros., President of Warnervision, a division of The Warner Music Group, and Saban Entertainment. Additionally, he has created and/or executive-produced numerous award-winning and critically acclaimed shows, series and specials across almost every facet of entertainment, which have reached, entertained and educated hundreds of millions of people around the world.

In his new role at Lindblad, Mr. Goodman will be responsible for all revenue production and will lead marketing, sales, digital product development and strategic partnerships.

“As we navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic and look to reactivate in 2021, David Goodman will be a very meaningful addition to our leadership team. Lindblad Expeditions was on a solid growth trajectory prior to the pandemic and intends to continue on an aggressive growth plan in 2021 and beyond. David’s skills and background will add immeasurably in building the marketing and sales platform that will fuel that growth,” stated Sven Lindblad, President and CEO of Lindblad Expeditions.

Mr. Goodman, who will be based at Lindblad’s headquarters in New York, commented, “Since a young age, I’ve loved traveling, especially to places a bit off the beaten path. For almost 50 years, Lindblad has been the leader in experiential travel, taking hundreds of thousands of people on expeditions to the most extraordinary places in the world. We have a tremendous opportunity to innovate the existing business with new content, technology, products and services, which will drive interest and demand while positioning the company for future growth. I can’t think of a better opportunity both personally and professionally, especially given the timing as we prepare for the world to start traveling again.

About Lindblad Expeditions Holdings, Inc.

Lindblad Expeditions Holdings, Inc. is an expedition travel company that focuses on ship-based voyages through its Lindblad Expeditions brand and on land-based travel through its subsidiary, Natural Habitat Adventures, an adventure travel and ecotourism company with a focus on responsible nature travel.

Lindblad Expeditions works in partnership with National Geographic to inspire people to explore and care about the planet. The organizations work in tandem to produce innovative marine expedition programs and to promote conservation and sustainable tourism around the world. The partnership’s educationally oriented voyages allow guests to interact with and learn from leading scientists, naturalists and researchers while discovering stunning natural environments, above and below the sea, through state-of-the-art exploration tools.

Natural Habitat partners with the World Wildlife Fund to offer and promote conservation and sustainable travel that directly protects nature. Natural Habitat’s adventures include polar bear tours in Churchill, Canada, Alaskan grizzly bear adventures and African safaris.

For more information visit us at www.expeditions.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

Images of David Goodmanhere.

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SOURCE Lindblad Expeditions Holdings, Inc.

November 11, 2020 4:26 pm

SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Pomerantz Law Firm Reminds Shareholders with Losses on their Investment in Reata Pharmaceuticals, Inc. of Class Action Lawsuit and Upcoming Deadline – RETA

NEW YORK, Nov. 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Reata Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Reata” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: RETA) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division, and docketed under 20-cv-00796, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons other than Defendants who purchased or otherwise, acquired Reata securities between October 15, 2019 and August 7, 2020, both dates inclusive (the “Class Period”), seeking to recover damages caused by Defendants’ violations of the federal securities laws and to pursue remedies under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”) and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder, against the Company and certain of its top officials.

If you are a shareholder who purchased Reata securities during the class period, you have until December 14, 2020, to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 7980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased.

[Click here for information about joining the class action]

Reata is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company that develops novel therapeutics for patients with serious or life-threatening diseases by targeting molecular pathways that regulate cellular metabolism and inflammation.

Among Reata’s drug candidates under development is omaveloxolone, which is in Phase 2 clinical development to treat Friedreich’s ataxia (“FA”). Following the announcement of positive data from the MOXIe Part 2 study of omaveloxolone for FA in October 2019, the Company represented that it would seek submission for marketing approval of omaveloxolone for the treatment of FA in the U.S. with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”).

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company’s business. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) the MOXIe Part 2 study results were insufficient to support a single study marketing approval of omaveloxolone for the treatment of FA in the U.S. without additional evidence; (ii) as a result, it was foreseeable that the FDA would not accept marketing approval of omaveloxolone for the treatment of FA in the U.S. based on the MOXIe Part 2 study results; and (iii) as a result, the Company’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On August 10, 2020, during pre-market hours, Reata issued a press release announcing its second quarter 2020 financial results, wherein it disclosed that the FDA “is not convinced that the MOXIe Part 2 results” of the Company’s study assessing omaveloxolone for the treatment of FA “will support a single study approval without additional evidence that lends persuasiveness to the results,” and that, “[i]n preliminary comments for [a] meeting, the FDA stated that [Defendants] will need to conduct a second pivotal trial that confirms the mFARS [modified Friedreich’s Ataxia Rating Scale] results of the MOXIe Part 2 study with a similar magnitude of effect.”

On this news, Reata’s stock price fell $51.79 per share, or 33.16%, to close at $104.41 per share on August 10, 2020.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

CONTACT:
Robert S. Willoughby
Pomerantz LLP
[email protected]

November 11, 2020 4:26 pm

Contango Announces Schedule for Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Release and Conference Call

HOUSTON, Nov. 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Contango Oil & Gas Company (NYSE American: MCF) (“Contango” or the “Company”) announced today that it plans to issue its third quarter 2020 earnings release after market close on Monday, November 16, 2020. In conjunction with the release, Contango will conduct a conference call to discuss the contents of that release on Monday, November 16, 2020 at 5:00 pm Central Standard Time.

Teleconference Call

Those interested in participating in the earnings conference call may do so by clicking h ere to j oin and entering your information to be connected. The link becomes active 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time, and the conference coordinator will call you. If you are not at a computer, you can join by dialing 800-309-1256, (International 1-323-347-3622) and entering participation code 732123. A replay of the call will be available Monday, November 16, 2020 at 8:00 pm CST through Monday, November 23, 2020 at 8:00 pm CST by clicking here.

About Contango Oil & Gas Company

Contango Oil & Gas Company is a Houston, Texas based, independent oil and natural gas company whose business is to maximize production and cash flow from its offshore properties in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico and onshore properties in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Wyoming and, when determined appropriate, to use that cash flow to explore, develop, exploit, and increase production from its existing properties, to acquire additional PDP-heavy crude oil and natural gas properties or to pay down debt. Additional information is available on the Company’s website at http://www.contango.com. Information on our website is not part of this release.

Contact:
Contango Oil & Gas Company
E. Joseph Grady – 713-236-7400
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial and Accounting Officer

November 11, 2020 4:24 pm

Alibaba Generates RMB498.2 Billion (US$74.1 Billion) in GMV During the 2020 11.11 Global Shopping Festival

Alibaba Generates RMB498.2 Billion (US$74.1 Billion) in GMV During the 2020 11.11 Global Shopping Festival

Over 470 participating brands surpassed RMB100 million in sales during the 11-day campaign

HANGZHOU, China–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA; HKEx: 9988) today announced the 2020 11.11 Global Shopping Festival generated RMB498.2 billion (US$74.1 billion) in gross merchandise volume (GMV) during the 11-day campaign from November 1 to 11, an increase of 26% compared to the same timeframe in 2019.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201111005881/en/

Alibaba generates RMB498.2 billion (US$74.1 billion) in GMV during the 2020 11.11 Global Shopping Festival (Photo: Business Wire)

“Over the past 12 years, innovation has been at the heart of 11.11 and along the way it became a global consumer festival. 11.11 is defined by our consumers, merchants and our partners across the ecosystem, and also a beneficiary of all the support from society,” said Jiang Fan, President of Taobao and Tmall. “We will continue to focus on developing our digital infrastructure in the service of empowering merchants of all sizes to find a path to success in the digital economy.”

Over 470 brands achieved more than RMB100 million in GMV, showcasing the value creation of digital transformation across the Alibaba Digital Economy.

The Alibaba digital infrastructure handled 583,000 orders per second during peak of activity, demonstrating the strength and scale of our underlying technology platform.

Cainiao Network processed more than 2.32 billion delivery orders cumulatively over the 11-day period.

Livestreaming has become an indispensable marketing tool, with over 30 livestreaming channels featured on Taobao Live that each generated more than RMB100 million in GMV.

Highlights from the 2020 11.11 Global Shopping Festival

250,000 brands in total participated in 11.11 this year, of which 31,000 are overseas brands. Within these overseas brands, 2,600 participated in 11.11 for the first time.
357 emerging brands became top sellers in their respective subcategories. More than 1,800 emerging brands surpassed their GMV from 11.11 last year and, of these, 94 emerging brands enjoyed sales growth of over 1,000%.
Under Alibaba’s Spring Thunder initiative, 1.2 million merchants and 300,000 factories focused on overseas trade from more than 2,000 industry clusters across China participated in 11.11.
AI customer chatbot handled over 2.1 billion queries during the 11-day period.
The United States was the top country selling to China by GMV. Other top-selling countries to China, in alphabetical order, include: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and UK.

Please visit Alibaba’s corporate news site Alizila for all the results, videos, fact sheets, B-roll footage and other content from the event.

About the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival

The 11.11 Global Shopping Festival began in 2009 with participation from just 27 merchants as an event for merchants and consumers to raise awareness about the value of online shopping. More than 250,000 brands are participating in this year’s event. For the latest news and updates on the 2020 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, please visit: www.alizila.com

About Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. The company aims to build the future infrastructure of commerce. It envisions that its customers will meet, work and live at Alibaba, and that it will be a good company that lasts for 102 years.

Note: GMV for the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival is the total value of orders settled through Alipay on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces, Kaola, Lazada, AliExpress, and New Retail and consumer services platforms from November 1 to November 11, 2020. It is reported on a real-time basis and includes shipping charges paid (where applicable). Alibaba Group’s operating results disclosed in this press release are denominated in RMB; year-over-year comparisons and growth rates are calculated on the basis of RMB amounts and are not affected by foreign exchange rate fluctuations. All translations of RMB into US$ are made at US$1=RMB6.7232, the central parity rate announced by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on October 30, 2020. All GMV and other figures presented in this press release are unaudited and subject to adjustments.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201111005881/en/

APAC:

Cathy Yan

Alibaba Group

+852 9012 5806

[email protected]

Americas:

Brion Tingler

Alibaba Group

+1 917 528 1992

[email protected]

EMEA:

Maja Hauke

Alibaba Group

+44 7534 016659

[email protected]

KEYWORDS: China United States North America Asia Pacific

INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Online Retail Data Management Retail Technology Mobile/Wireless Software Internet

MEDIA:

Photo

Alibaba generates RMB498.2 billion (US$74.1 billion) in GMV during the 2020 11.11 Global Shopping Festival (Photo: Business Wire)

November 11, 2020 4:23 pm

Pure Storage Named Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology for Best of Show Award at Flash Memory Summit 2020

FlashArray//C is Industry’s First All-QLC Flash Storage Array; Eliminates the Need for Hybrid Arrays

PR Newswire

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Pure Storage was honored with a Flash Memory Summit 2020 Best of Show Award for Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology at today’s Flash Memory Summit 2020 Best of Show Awards ceremony.

The Flash Memory Summit, the world’s largest and most prestigious storage industry conference and exposition, recognizes FlashArray//C as the industry’s first all-QLC flash storage array delivering consistent NVME performance and simplified management on par with today’s TLC-based flash media. The performance and financial efficiencies delivered by FlashArray//C enable organizations to reduce the cost of running capacity-oriented workloads so significantly it eliminates the need for legacy hybrid disk arrays. Previously, economics and performance challenges of legacy storage arrays have forced IT organizations to distinguish between performance-oriented workloads, and everything else. Designed for modern applications and workloads, FlashArray//C is uniquely capable of using raw QLC flash to provide enterprise-grade performance and endurance, without the expense of over-provisioning or adding a persistent memory tier.

“Modern applications and workloads are demanding the high performance of all-flash storage but need the financial efficiencies that can address the growing capacity requirements on budget,” said Jay Kramer, Chairman of the Awards Program and President of Network Storage Advisors Inc. “We are proud to recognize Pure Storage QLC-based FlashArray//C as the industry’s first all-QLC flash storage array delivering consistent NVMe performance while making all-flash accessible for a growing number of use cases previously relegated to spinning disk or less efficient hybrid solutions.”

“Pure Storage trail-blazed the all-flash storage market, and continues to lead the market in storage innovation,” said Shawn Hansen, Vice President and General Manager of FlashArray. “The market has waited in anticipation for flash to displace traditional disk-based arrays. FlashArray//C is the first product to ship enterprise-grade QLC, which makes flash available at the right price point and scale needed for all workloads, including backup, test/dev, and consolidation.”

According to show organizers, a record number of award submissions were received this year making the judging challenging and each of the categories extremely competitive.

Details of the award-winning companies, innovative products and solutions can be found at: https://flashmemorysummit.com/English/News_Info/Best_of_Show/BOS_Winners.html

Supporting Resources

Visit Pure Storage: https://purestorage.com/
Follow Pure Storage on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PureStorage
Visit FMS: www.FlashMemorySummit.com
Follow FMS on Twitter:@Flashmem

About Flash Memory Summit

Flash Memory Summit showcases the mainstream applications, key technologies, leading vendors, and innovative startups driving the multi-billion-dollar non-volatile memory and SSD markets. FMS is now the world’s largest event featuring the trends, innovations, and influencers leading the adoption of flash memory in demanding enterprise storage, high-performance computing, and cloud systems.

About Pure Storage

Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG) gives technologists their time back. Pure delivers a modern data experience that empowers organizations to run their operations as a true, automated, storage as-a-service model seamlessly across multiple clouds. One of the fastest-growing enterprise IT companies in history, Pure helps customers put data to use while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it. And with a certified customer satisfaction score in the top one percent of B2B companies, Pure’s ever-expanding list of customers are among the happiest in the world.

Pure Storage, the “P” Logo, Evergreen, FlashArray, FlashBlade, Pure1 and Pure as-a-Service are trademarks or registered trademarks of Pure Storage, Inc. All other trademarks or names referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Analyst Recognition:

Pure Storage has been named a Leader in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage.

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SOURCE Pure Storage

November 11, 2020 4:23 pm

CNO Financial Group Appoints Steven Shebik and Nominates Chet Ragavan to its Board of Directors, Director Charles Jacklin to Retire

PR Newswire

CARMEL, Ind., Nov. 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — CNO Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE: CNO) today announced that its board of directors has appointed Steven Shebik as a director, effective immediately, and nominated Chet Ragavan as a director to stand for election at the company’s annual meeting in May 2021. Shebik’s appointment increases the size of the board to 10 directors.

“We are very pleased to welcome Steve to the CNO Board of Directors and to announce Chet’s nomination to stand for election in May 2021,” said Board Chair Dan Maurer. “Steve and Chet are both highly respected leaders, each with more than three decades of insurance and financial services industry experience.”

“Steve’s significant finance, investment, risk and management experience in insurance, captive agent distribution and manufactured products with a publicly traded insurer is an important strategic fit for CNO,” continued Maurer. “Chet is a proven thought leader and executive with deep knowledge of risk management, accounting and investment strategy for financial services firms focusing on retirement solutions. Both of their contributions will be invaluable to the CNO board as we continue to advance our growth strategy, serve our middle-income consumers and deliver shareholder value.”

Shebik, 64, is the former vice chair of The Allstate Corporation and Allstate Insurance Company and former chief executive officer of Allstate Life Insurance, positions he held from 2018 until his retirement in 2020 after a 25-year career with the company. From 2012 to 2018, Shebik served as executive vice president and chief financial officer at Allstate. He was the senior financial executive for Allstate Investments from 2009 to 2012, Allstate Protection from 2005 to 2008, and Allstate Life Insurance from 2001 to 2005. Prior to joining Allstate in 1995, he held roles in finance and accounting with Sears and Arthur Andersen. Shebik received bachelor’s degrees in accounting and finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Chicago.

Ragavan, 66, is the former executive vice president and chief risk officer of Voya Financial, a position he held from 2014 until his retirement in 2019. From 2008 to 2013, he served as managing director and chief risk officer for Voya Investment Management. Prior to joining Voya, Ragavan was managing director and co-head of the portfolio analytics group for BlackRock from 2006 to 2008. He began his career at Merrill Lynch in 1980 and held several senior leadership roles during his 26-year career with the company, including as managing director and global head of fixed income research of Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and as managing director and head of risk management of Merrill Lynch Asset Management. Ragavan received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Madurai University, a Master of Business Administration from Madras University, and a master’s degree in computer science from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

CNO also announced that Charles Jacklin has decided to retire from the company’s board of directors at the conclusion of his current term, which ends upon the close of the annual meeting in May 2021. Jacklin joined CNO’s board in May 2015 and serves as chair of the Investment Committee and as a member of the Audit and Enterprise Risk Committee.

“On behalf of the board, we thank Charlie for his years of dedicated stewardship and service to CNO, our customers and shareholders,” said Board Chair Dan Maurer. “Charlie brought an experienced investment perspective and expertise to the board and the Investment Committee at a pivotal time in CNO’s history. We remain grateful for Charlie’s leadership and many significant contributions to our company.”

For more information, visit CNO online at CNOinc.com.

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SOURCE CNO Financial Group, Inc.

November 11, 2020 4:23 pm

AB Announces October 31, 2020 Assets Under Management

PR Newswire

NEW YORK, Nov. 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — AllianceBernstein L.P. (“AB”) and AllianceBernstein Holding L.P. (“AB Holding”) (NYSE: AB) today announced that preliminary assets under management decreased to $622 billion during October 2020 from $631 billion at the end of September. The 1.4% decrease was due primarily to market depreciation, and to a lesser extent, firmwide net outflows in each channel – Institutions, Retail, and Private Wealth. Institutional outflows reflected $2.6 billion in money market outflows, as well as $0.7 billion from AXA S.A. Year-to-date, AXA redemptions amounted to approximately $11.8 billion of the total expected redemptions of $14 billion.

AllianceBernstein L.P. (The Operating Partnership)
Assets Under Management ($ in Billions)

	At October 31, 2020								At Sep 30
									2020

					Private
	Institutions		Retail		Wealth		Total		Total

Equity
Actively Managed	$	51	$	91	$	45	$	187	$	189
Passive	24		31		1		56		58
Total Equity	75		122		46		243		247

Fixed Income
Taxable	152		82		15		249		253
Tax-Exempt	1		22		25		48		48
Passive	—		9		—		9		9
Total Fixed Income	153		113		40		306		310

Other⁽¹⁾	56		6		11		73		74
Total	$	284	$	241	$	97	$	622	$	631


	At September 30, 2020

Total	$	289	$	243	$	99	$	631

⁽¹⁾ Includes certain multi-asset services and solutions and certain alternative investments.

Cautions Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements provided by management in this news release are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The most significant of these factors include, but are not limited to, the following: the performance of financial markets, the investment performance of sponsored investment products and separately-managed accounts, general economic conditions, industry trends, future acquisitions, integration of acquired companies, competitive conditions, and government regulations, including changes in tax regulations and rates and the manner in which the earnings of publicly-traded partnerships are taxed. AB cautions readers to carefully consider such factors. Further, such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which such statements are made; AB undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements. For further information regarding these forward-looking statements and the factors that could cause actual results to differ, see “Risk Factors” and “Cautions Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in AB’s Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019 or subsequent Forms 10-Q. Any or all of the forward-looking statements made in this news release, Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, other documents AB files with or furnishes to the SEC and any other public statements issued by AB, may turn out to be wrong. It is important to remember that other factors besides those listed in “Risk Factors” and “Cautions Regarding Forward-Looking Statements”, and those listed above, could also adversely affect AB’s financial condition, results of operations and business prospects.

About AllianceBernstein

AllianceBernstein is a leading global investment management firm that offers high-quality research and diversified investment services to institutional investors, individuals and private wealth clients in major world markets.

As of September 30, 2020, including both the general partnership and limited partnership interests in AllianceBernstein, AllianceBernstein Holding owned approximately 35.5% of AllianceBernstein and Equitable Holdings, Inc. (“EQH”), directly and through various subsidiaries, owned an approximate 65.3% economic interest in AllianceBernstein.

Additional information about AB may be found on our website, www.alliancebernstein.com.

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ab-announces-october-31-2020-assets-under-management-301171306.html

SOURCE AllianceBernstein

November 11, 2020 4:23 pm

Lexington Realty Trust Announces Sale Of Dow Chemical Office Property

NEW YORK, Nov. 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Lexington Realty Trust (NYSE:LXP) (“Lexington”), a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on single-tenant industrial real estate investments, today announced that it sold its interest in the Lake Jackson, Texas office property leased to Dow Chemical for $192 million, including the assumption by the buyer of the first mortgage loan secured by the property, which had an unpaid principal balance of $179 million. In connection with the sale, Lexington anticipates it will recognize a $57 million gain on the sale.

In addition, Lexington acquired a 201,784 square foot warehouse/distribution facility on 48 acres in a logistics submarket of Phoenix, Arizona for $88 million. The facility is 100% leased to a leading e-commerce company through March 2033.

ABOUT LEXINGTON REALTY TRUST

Lexington Realty Trust (NYSE: LXP) is a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on single-tenant industrial real estate investments across the United States. Lexington seeks to expand its industrial portfolio through build-to-suit transactions, sale-leaseback transactions, development projects and other transactions, including acquisitions. For more information or to follow Lexington on social media, visit www.lxp.com.

Contact:
Investor or Media Inquiries for Lexington Realty Trust:
Beth Boulerice, Chief Financial Officer
Lexington Realty Trust
Phone: (212) 692-7200 E-mail: [email protected]

November 11, 2020 4:22 pm

AWS Announces AWS Glue DataBrew

AWS Announces AWS Glue DataBrew

New visual data preparation tool for AWS Glue enables data scientists and data analysts to clean and normalize data up to 80% faster than traditional approaches to data preparation

NTT DOCOMO, bp, and INVISTA among customers using AWS Glue DataBrew

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced the general availability of AWS Glue DataBrew, a new visual data preparation tool that enables customers to clean and normalize data without writing code. Since 2016, data engineers have used AWS Glue to create, run, and monitor extract, transform, and load (ETL) jobs. AWS Glue provides both code-based and visual interfaces, and has dramatically simplified extracting, orchestrating, and loading data in the cloud for customers. Data analysts and data scientists have wanted an easier way to clean and transform this data, and that’s what DataBrew delivers, with a service that allows data exploration and experimentation directly from AWS data lakes, data warehouses, and databases without writing code. AWS Glue DataBrew offers customers over 250 pre-built transformations to automate data preparation tasks (e.g. filtering anomalies, standardizing formats, and correcting invalid values) that would otherwise require days or weeks writing hand-coded transformations. Once the data is prepared, customers can immediately start using it with AWS and third-party analytics and machine learning services to query the data and train machine learning models. There are no upfront commitments or costs to use AWS Glue DataBrew, and customers only pay for creating and running transformations on datasets. To get started, visit https://aws.amazon.com/glue/features/databrew.

Preparing data for analytics and machine learning involves several necessary and time-consuming tasks, including data extraction, cleaning, normalization, loading, and the orchestration of ETL workflows at scale. For extracting, orchestrating, and loading data at scale, data engineers and ETL developers skilled in SQL or programming languages like Python or Scala can use AWS Glue. ETL developers often prefer the visual interfaces common in modern ETL tools over writing SQL, Python, or Scala, so AWS recently introduced AWS Glue Studio, a new visual interface to help author, run, and monitor ETL jobs without having to write any code. Once the data has been reliably moved, the underlying data still needs to be cleaned and normalized by data analysts and data scientists that operate in the lines of business and understand the context of the data. To clean and normalize the data, data analysts and data scientists have to either work with small batches of the data in Excel or Jupyter Notebooks, which cannot accommodate large data sets, or rely on scarce data engineers and ETL developers to write custom code to perform cleaning and normalization transformations. In an effort to spot anomalies in the data, highly skilled data engineers and ETL developers spend days or weeks writing custom workflows to pull data from different sources, then pivot, transpose, and slice the data multiple times, before they can iterate with data analysts or data scientists to identify and fix data quality issues. After they have developed these transformations, data engineers and ETL developers still need to schedule the custom workflows to run on an ongoing basis, so new incoming data can automatically be cleaned and normalized. Each time a data analyst or data scientist wants to change or add a transformation, the data engineers and ETL developers need to extract, load, clean, normalize, and orchestrate the data preparation tasks over again. This iterative process can take several weeks to months to complete; and as a result, customers spend as much as 80% of their time cleaning and normalizing data instead of actually analyzing the data and extracting value from it.

AWS Glue DataBrew is a visual data preparation tool for AWS Glue that allows data analysts and data scientists to clean and transform data with an interactive, point-and-click visual interface, without writing any code. With AWS Glue DataBrew end users can easily access and visually explore any amount of data across their organization directly from their Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) data lake, Amazon Redshift data warehouse, and Amazon Aurora and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) databases. Customers can choose from over 250 built-in functions to combine, pivot, and transpose the data without writing code. AWS Glue DataBrew recommends data cleaning and normalization steps like filtering anomalies, normalizing data to standard date and time values, generating aggregates for analyses, and correcting invalid, misclassified, or duplicative data. For complex tasks like converting words to a common base or root word (e.g. converting “yearly” and “yearlong” to “year”), AWS Glue DataBrew also provides transformations that use advanced machine learning techniques like Natural Language Processing (NLP). Users can then save these cleaning and normalization steps into a workflow (called a recipe) and apply them automatically to future incoming data. If changes need to be made to the workflow, data analysts and data scientists simply update the cleaning and normalization steps in the recipe, and they are automatically applied to new data as it arrives. AWS Glue DataBrew publishes the prepared data to Amazon S3, which makes it easy for customers to immediately use it in analytics and machine learning. AWS Glue DataBrew is serverless and fully managed, so customers never need to configure, provision, or manage any compute resources.

“AWS customers are using data for analytics and machine learning at an unprecedented pace. However, these customers regularly tell us that their teams spend too much time on the undifferentiated, repetitive, and mundane tasks associated with data preparation,” said Raju Gulabani, VP of Database and Analytics, AWS. “Customers love the scalability and flexibility of code-based data preparation services like AWS Glue, but they could also benefit from allowing business users, data analysts, and data scientists to visually explore and experiment with data independently, without writing code. AWS Glue DataBrew features an easy-to-use visual interface that helps data analysts and data scientists of all technical levels understand, combine, clean, and transform data.”

AWS Glue DataBrew is generally available today in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), EU (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo), with availability in additional regions coming soon.

Tokyo-based NTT DOCOMO is the largest mobile service provider in Japan, serving more than 80 million customers. “Our analysts profile and query various kinds of structured and unstructured data in order to better understand usage patterns,” said Takashi Ito, General Manager of Marketing Platform Planning Department, NTT DOCOMO. “AWS Glue DataBrew provides a visual interface that enables both our technical and non-technical users to analyze data quickly and easily. Its advanced data profiling capability helps us better understand our data and monitor the data quality. AWS Glue DataBrew and other AWS analytics services have allowed us to streamline our workflow and increase productivity.”

bp is one of the world’s largest integrated energy companies. “A data lake is a critical part of our analytics strategy. One of the challenges we face is not being able to easily explore data before ingestion into our data lake,” said John Maio, Director, Data & Analytics Platforms Architecture, bp. “AWS Glue DataBrew has sophisticated data profiling functionality and a rich set of built-in transformations. This enables our data engineers to easily explore new datasets in a visual interface and make modifications in order to optimize ingestion and allow analysts to shape the data for their analytics solutions. We see AWS Glue DataBrew as a way to help us better manage our data platform and improve efficiencies in our data pipelines.”

INVISTA, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, is one of the world’s largest integrated producers of chemical intermediates, polymers, and fibers. “Data is critical to optimizing our manufacturing processes. One of the challenges we face is ensuring we have a clean data lake that can serve as the source of truth for our analytics and machine learning applications,” said Tanner Gonzalez, Analytics and Cloud leader, INVISTA. “The data ingested into our data lake often contains duplicate values, incorrect formatting and other imperfections that make it difficult to use in its raw form. Amazon AWS Glue DataBrew will allow our data analysts to visually inspect large data sets, clean and enrich data, and perform advanced transformations. AWS Glue DataBrew will empower our analysts and data scientists to perform advanced data engineering activities, giving them the freedom to explore their data and decreasing the time to derive new insights.”

About Amazon Web Services

For 14 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 175 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 77 Availability Zones (AZs) within 24 geographic regions, with announced plans for 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in India, Indonesia, Japan, Spain, and Switzerland. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit www.amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

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November 11, 2020 4:19 pm

EnerSys Announces Quarterly Dividend

READING, Pa., Nov. 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — EnerSys (NYSE: ENS), the global leader in stored energy solutions for industrial applications, announced today that its Board of Directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.175 per share of common stock payable on December 31, 2020, to holders of record as of December 18, 2020.

For more information, contact Michael J. Schmidtlein, Chief Financial Officer, EnerSys, P.O. Box 14145, Reading, PA 19612-4145, USA. Tel: 610-236-4040 or by emailing [email protected]; Web site: www.enersys.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: EnerSys, the global leader in stored energy solutions for industrial applications, manufactures and distributes energy systems solutions and motive power batteries, specialty batteries, battery chargers, power equipment, battery accessories and outdoor equipment enclosure solutions to customers worldwide. Energy Systems, which combine enclosures, power conversion, power distribution and energy storage, are used in the telecommunication, broadband and utility industries, uninterruptible power supplies, and numerous applications requiring stored energy solutions. Motive power batteries and chargers are utilized in electric forklift trucks and other industrial electric powered vehicles. Specialty batteries are used in aerospace and defense applications, large over-the-road trucks, premium automotive, medical and security systems applications. EnerSys also provides aftermarket and customer support services to its customers in over 100 countries through its sales and manufacturing locations around the world. With the recent NorthStar acquisition, EnerSys has solidified its position as the market leader for premium Thin Plate Pure Lead batteries which are sold across all three lines of business.

More information regarding EnerSys can be found at www.enersys.com.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release, and oral statements made regarding the subjects of this release, contains forward-looking statements, within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, or the Reform Act, which may include, but are not limited to, statements regarding EnerSys’ earnings estimates, intention to return capital to stockholders, plans, objectives, expectations and intentions and other statements contained in this press release that are not historical facts, including statements identified by words such as “believe,” “plan,” “seek,” “expect,” “intend,” “estimate,” “anticipate,” “will,” and similar expressions. All statements addressing operating performance, events, or developments that EnerSys expects or anticipates will occur in the future, including statements relating to sales growth, earnings or earnings per share growth, its intention to pay quarterly cash dividends and return capital to stockholders, execution of its stock repurchase program, and market share, as well as statements expressing optimism or pessimism about future operating results or benefits from either its cash dividend or its stock repurchase programs, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Reform Act. The forward-looking statements are based on management’s current views and assumptions regarding future events and operating performance, and are inherently subject to significant business, economic, and competitive uncertainties and contingencies and changes in circumstances, many of which are beyond EnerSys’ control. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, even if subsequently made available by EnerSys on its website or otherwise. EnerSys does not undertake any obligation to update or revise these statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this press release.

Although EnerSys does not make forward-looking statements unless it believes it has a reasonable basis for doing so, EnerSys cannot guarantee their accuracy. For a list of other factors which could affect EnerSys’ results, including earnings estimates, see EnerSys’ filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including “Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” including “Forward-Looking Statements,” set forth in EnerSys’ Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020. The foregoing factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. No undue reliance should be placed on any forward-looking statements.