Fobi AI Inc. (the "Company" or "Fobi"), an industry leader in harnessing AI and data intelligence to enable digital transformation, announces that it has proactively applied for a voluntary management cease trade order (the “MCTO”) with the British Columbia Securities Commission, as a result of certain factors beyond the Company’s control, which will cause delays to the filing of the Company’s annual financial statements and accompanying management’s discussion and analysis for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023 (the “Required Filings”). The MCTO only restricts the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of the Company from all trading in securities of the Company until such time as the Required Filings have been filed by the Company and the MCTO has been lifted. The MCTO does not affect the ability of other shareholders of the Company to trade in securities of the Company.

The delay in the Required Filings is a result of an ongoing remediation process by the Company’s prior auditors relating to the audit of the Company for the financial year ended June 30, 2022, which they previously completed, as well as the ongoing current year audit. The Company is working diligently with the previous auditors to resolve their matter as quickly as possible and with the current auditors to complete and finalize the audit of the June 30, 2023, financial statements.

Rob Anson, CEO of Fobi AI, states: “Our business is growing and has expanded its operations globally, which has brought about certain complexities. After careful consideration, we have made the decision to file a voluntary MCTO (Management Cease Trade Order) and take proactive measures to safeguard the liquidity of our stock. We view this as a responsible and proactive step towards ensuring transparency, compliance, and protecting the interests of our shareholders with regard to the liquidity of our stock.”

The Company expects to file the Required Filings before November 30, 2023. Until the Company files the Required Filings, it will comply with the alternative information guidelines set out in National Policy 12-203 – Management Cease Trade Orders. The guidelines, among other things, require the Company to issue bi-weekly default status reports by way of a news release until such time as the Required Filings have been filed.

Comviva, the global leader in customer experience and data monetization solutions, today announced that its NGAGE – CPaaS Solution has received the prestigious Global Carrier Awards 2023 in the 'Best Cloud Innovation' category. The 19th annual Global Carrier Awards (GCAs) took place in London last week, during the 2023 Capacity Europe conference.

Comviva's NGAGE CPaaS Solution has garnered widespread acclaim from leading analyst firms, including Juniper and Gartner, for empowering telcos with a comprehensive suite of cloud-based communication solutions tailored for enterprise clients. These solutions seamlessly engage customers across multiple channels, including SMS, Email, WhatsApp, Voice, Video, and Conversational AI, while offering cognitive automation and NLP capabilities.

NGAGE has been successfully deployed by more than 80 telecom operators, enabling them to provide CPaaS services to over 7,000 businesses worldwide. This platform facilitates an impressive annual traffic volume of over 250 billion messages and has played a pivotal role in assisting Telcos in generating new revenue streams, with a substantial annual growth of USD 140 million.

Speaking on the occasion, Deshbandhu Bansal, Chief Operating Officer, Messaging Solutions at Comviva said, "We are proud to receive this prestigious Global Carrier Awards 2023. The acknowledgment of our NGAGE CPaaS platform as the Best Cloud Innovation reaffirms our unwavering commitment to innovation and excellence within the realm of cloud-based communication solutions. We remain dedicated to fostering positive transformation and growth for our telecom partners, enabling them to thrive in an ever-evolving market. This accolade not only validates our efforts but also serves as a source of motivation to continuously push the boundaries of what's achievable in the realm of carrier services."

The Global Carrier Awards is an annual event that recognizes and celebrates outstanding achievements and innovations in the telecommunications and carrier industry. This prestigious awards ceremony acknowledges the contributions of companies and individuals who have made significant advancements in the field of global communication and connectivity services.

HCLTech to deploy Salesforce CRM for Banco do Brasil in one of the largest CRM projects implemented in Latin America

HCLTech, a leading global technology company, has announced that Banco do Brasil, one of the largest financial institutions in Latin America, through a bidding process, has chosen HCLTech to support the bank’s digital transformation and customer relationship management (CRM) journey and implementation of Salesforce.

HCLTech’s partnership with Salesforce will enable Banco do Brasil to hyper-personalize customer relationship and service solutions, generating greater customer satisfaction and engagement within their omnichannel ecosystem, using AI resources, data unification and intelligent guidelines.

“We are proud to be part of the transformation and modernization of one of the most important banks in the country. The partnership with Salesforce is another significant step for HCLTech in accelerating the digital transformation of financial services in Brazil,” said Fabiano Funari, Vice President and Country Manager - Brazil, HCLTech. “We look forward to collaborating with Salesforce to implement one of Brazil's most complex CRM projects in Banco do Brasil.”

“We are glad to bring our global consulting and transformation expertise on the Salesforce platform to help Banco do Brasil reimagine itself for the powerful digital world with its vision to digitize every touchpoint and transform user experiences,” said Sadagopan Singam, Executive Vice President, Digital Business, HCLTech.

HCLTech will create a dedicated team of specialists with extensive CRM experience to implement Salesforce solutions for Banco do Brasil. HCLTech will use four Salesforce solutions to improve and transform the customer experience throughout Banco do Brasil: Financial Services Cloud, which reduces service costs with automation and empowers the front-office to discover key insights about their customers and their financial needs; Marketing Cloud to deliver customer experiences; Salesforce integration manager , for integration and automation solutions; and Professional Services, to ensure a successful implementation.

The consolidated platform will allow the bank to take advantage of interactions and insights from customers to offer adequate and personalized products, further strengthening its relationship and generating greater efficiency in base expansion and leveraging new business.

“We are excited about the partnership with HCLTech and are confident that our integrated solutions will strengthen Banco do Brasil's relationship with its customers. We look forward to enabling their digital transformation journey to impact productivity when it comes to sales, customer service and marketing,” said Fabio Costa, General Manager from Salesforce Brazil.

With operations in Brazil for 14 years, HCLTech has presence in São Paulo, São Leopoldo and Curitiba. It continues to supercharge progress for over 200 customers in Brazil, including Fortune 500 organizations.

Salesforce, Financial Services Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Assurance, MuleSoft and others are among the trademarks of Salesforce, Inc.

Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd., today announced its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023.

Third Quarter 2023:                                                         

• Total Revenues: $596 million, a 3 percent increase year over year
• Security Subscriptions Revenues: $248 million, a 15 percent increase year over year
• Deferred Revenues: $1,709 million, a 4 percent increase year over year
• GAAP Operating Income: $226 million, representing 38 percent of revenues
• Non-GAAP Operating Income: $269 million, representing 45 percent of revenues
• GAAP EPS: $1.75, a 19 percent increase year over year
• Non-GAAP EPS: $2.07, a 17 percent increase year over year

“Our third quarter performance was strong, marked by a 17 percent increase in earnings per share and a 15 percent rise in security subscriptions revenues. We achieved total revenues near the top of our forecast range, with earnings per share hitting the peak,” stated Gil Shwed, Founder and CEO of Check Point Software. “In the past 60 days, we’ve successfully completed three acquisitions, underscoring our security platform leadership. The acquisition of Perimeter 81 has provided us a single-vendor SASE solution that delivers twice the speed of competitive solutions while ensuring industry-leading prevention-first security.”

“Despite the tragic events in Israel over the past three weeks our global business has continued to operate as planned thanks to the commitment and dedication of our employees.  We introduced innovative new products, completed acquisitions, and continued to deliver the highest level of protection and service to our customers and partners. During this period, we’ve received incredible support from our employees, customers, partners, and the investment community. We truly appreciate you standing with us,” concluded Mr. Shwed.

Financial Highlights for the Third Quarter of 2023:

• Total Revenues: $596 million compared to $578 million in the third quarter of 2022, a 3 percent increase year over year.
• GAAP Operating Income: $226 million compared to $221 million in the third quarter of 2022, representing 38 percent of revenues in the third quarter of 2023 and 2022, respectively.
• Non-GAAP Operating Income: $269 million compared to $263 million in the third quarter of 2022, representing 45 percent of revenues in the third quarter of 2023 and 2022, respectively.
• GAAP Taxes on Income: $39 million compared to $49 million in the third quarter of 2022.
• GAAP Net Income: $205 million compared to $184 million in the third quarter of 2022.
• Non-GAAP Net Income: $242 million compared to $221 million in the third quarter of 2022.
• GAAP Earnings per Diluted share: $1.75 compared to $1.47 in the third quarter of 2022, a 19 percent increase year over year.
• Non-GAAP Earnings per Diluted share: $2.07 compared to $1.77 in the third quarter of 2022, a 17 percent increase year over year.
• Deferred Revenues: As of September 30, 2023, deferred revenues were $1,709 million compared to $1,647 million as of September 30, 2022, a 4 percent increase year over year.
• Cash Balances, Marketable Securities and Short-Term Deposits: $2,989 million as of September 30, 2023, compared to $3,570 million as of September 30, 2022.
• Cash Flow: During the quarter we acquired Perimeter 81, a pioneering Security Service Edge (SSE) company, and Atmosec, an early-stage SaaS security vendor, for $477 million net cash consideration. Cash flow from operations was $222 million, compared to $240 million in the third quarter of 2022.  The operating cash flow for the quarter included a cost of $22 million related to acquisitions.
• Share Repurchase Program: During the third quarter of 2023, we repurchased approximately 2.48 million shares at a total cost of approximately $325 million.

TELUS International Fuel iX drives value for clients by providing an end-to-end next generation customer experience solution fueled by GenAI - including digital consulting, data analytics, self-service applications, and AI-enabled platform integration

Eight-week accelerator program unlocks GenAI potential with a path to production for companies at the start of their AI journeys

TELUS International, a leading digital customer experience (CX) innovator that designs, builds and delivers next-generation solutions, including artificial intelligence (AI) and content moderation, for global and disruptive brands, today announced the launch of Fuel iX, the company’s enhanced solution backed by the power of generative AI (GenAI) to deliver end-to-end CX innovation and AI-fueled intelligent experiences (iX). With Fuel iX, TELUS International helps global clients meet critical CX business needs faster, and more strategically, than ever before.

TELUS International’s comprehensive suite of innovative services combine digital consulting, data services and analytics, web and mobile application development, and an AI-fueled platform. The solution helps companies overcome disjointed data and organization silos, and ensures that AI is embedded in the functionality of day-to-day CX operations and workflows so that companies adopt it, employees use it, and customers benefit from it.

“Since our company's inception, we have been committed to driving value for our clients by helping them grow revenue, take costs and risks out of their business and serve and exceed the expectations of their customers more effectively by evolving, advancing and enhancing our capabilities to incorporate leading-edge technologies,” said Jeff Puritt, President and CEO, TELUS International. “Fuel iX is in many ways, a culmination of our team’s significant efforts over the years to position ourselves to offer a complete, end-to-end CX journey, fueled by GenAI.”

According to Deloitte, nearly two-thirds (62%) of contact centers are delivering disjointed CX across communications channels. Additionally, 34% of customers, according to the Call Centre Management Association, are most frustrated when passed to another representative during a contact or call. Fuel iX ameliorates these challenges by providing brands with end-to-end support, from consultation on strategy and roadmaps, to building the full platform and data layer, to operating a cohesive, differentiated solution to delight their end users. These integrated services address the bottleneck many companies endure in gathering accurate, high-quality datasets and accelerates the pace of proof of concept to production, all within secure, sovereign instances where client data is protected and private. Fuel iX leads brands along this path, all guided by TELUS International’s “humanity-in-the-loop approach,” leveraging reinforcement learning through human feedback to suppress data inaccuracies and bias.

As the name suggests, Fuel iX brings together the full spectrum of intelligent experiences across customer, digital, voice, user, employee and human experience. It’s with this holistic internal and external engagement view, that GenAI technology can truly create tangible value for clients. The company is already working with several clients as part of the Fuel iX offering, including iRobot and TELUS.

"We’re committed to helping businesses around the globe thrive in a digital world," said Navin Arora, Executive Vice-president, TELUS, and President, TELUS Business Solutions and TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods. "Leveraging these contextual and conversational capabilities gives us the edge for providing AI-powered innovations that create opportunities to transform customer experience, drive greater productivity, and fuel data monetization growth."

"As a customer-first organization, it is important that iRobot Customer Care is equipping our employees with the tools they need to efficiently and successfully resolve issues," said Ledia Dilo, Vice-president, Head of Global Customer Care and Fulfillment at iRobot. "TELUS International's AI agent-assist bot has been a part of improving our agents’ confidence and reducing new-hire average call handle time (AHT) by more than 10% (and up to 25% in the first five weeks). iRobot is delighted to have been recognized as ICMI's 2023 Contact Center of the Year, and we look forward to leveraging the TELUS International GenAI platform as a way to continue improving our customer and employee experience moving forward.”

GenAI Jumpstart Accelerator Program

For companies at an early stage of their AI and data journey, TELUS International’s GenAI Jumpstart accelerator program provides an eight-week engagement to help unlock the GenAI potential in an organization. With a path-to-production focus, the accelerator program can rapidly identify GenAI use cases, build powerful risk mitigation tools, and deliver a bespoke prototype to help demonstrate the value of AI to the business.

"As part of GenAI Jumpstart, we've been working with a leading global financial services firm to create a GenAI customer service chatbot to empower customers with a robust conversational literacy tool,” said Tobias Dengal, President of WillowTree, a TELUS International Company. “We designed guardrails and used sophisticated methods of hallucination mitigation to keep the conversation between the customer and the bot relevant and high value. For this particular client, the engagement took less than eight weeks to design a full proof of concept and path-to-production vision that can now be enhanced with additional Fuel iX capabilities.”

Netwrix has upgraded half of its product portfolio in the past six months.

Netwrix, a cybersecurity vendor that makes data security easy, has released new versions of eight products since March 2023. The enhancements further help customers reduce the risk of breaches and limit the impact of attacks by empowering IT teams to fortify the security posture and to promptly detect and respond to threats and recover from them faster and with less effort. 

Solutions with notable key enhancements include the following: 

• Active Directory (AD) security solution:

- Netwrix Threat Manager (formerly Netwrix StealthDEFEND) now detects AS-REP Roasting attacks to prevent adversaries from taking over user accounts.

- Netwrix StealthINTERCEPT now accelerates detection of LSASS access blocking by third-party software to enable swift recognition and resolution of the situation. 

- Netwrix Password Policy Enforcer makes it even easier for users to choose strong, compliant passwords by providing them with real-time feedback about proposed new passwords.

• Identity and access management (IAM) solution:

- Netwrix Password Secure enhances the security of the account creation process with token verification of the user's identity during multi-factor authentication (MFA) setup.

- Netwrix Usercube further reduces the attack surface by removing direct role assignments that are redundant given the role model's rules. 

• Privileged access management (PAM) solution:

-  Netwrix PolicyPak further enhances least-privilege management on endpoints by adding support of MacOS. Now customers are empowered to control local admin rights across Windows and MacOS computers to ensure robust endpoint security posture without affecting end-user productivity.

- Netwrix Auditor improves control over privileged groups in Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) with a dedicated report that facilitates regular access reviews.

• Multi-tenant SaaS auditing product designed for MSPs:

- Netwrix 1Secure now accelerates incident detection and response across the SharePoint Online and on-premises infrastructure of each MSP customer. Plus, detailed reports on AD risk metrics simplify assessment of their security posture and pinpoint risky accounts.

"Because nearly 3 in 4 organizations today have a hybrid IT architecture, Netwrix is focused on enabling strong, consistent security measures across the whole on-premises and cloud infrastructure," says Michael Tweddle, Chief Product Officer at Netwrix. "Our near-term product roadmap is aimed at enhancing our support of cloud services and instances to address the ongoing security challenges of cloud adoption."

• Combination expected to deliver a more than five-fold expansion in Lumentum’s cloud intra-data center served opportunity

• Served opportunity expected to grow at over 30% CAGR through 2028, driven by investments to support the rapid proliferation of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) applications

• Acquisition expected to be immediately accretive to non-GAAP earnings per share and to more than double Lumentum’s cloud intra-data center infrastructure revenue in the 12-month period following the transaction close

• Lumentum to host an investor call today, October 30, at 5:30 a.m. PT to discuss the transaction

Lumentum Holdings Inc. (“Lumentum”) and Cloud Light Technology Limited (“Cloud Light”) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Lumentum will acquire Cloud Light with a transaction value of approximately $750 million, subject to certain adjustments. At the time of closing, transaction consideration will be paid in cash and the assumption and substitution of outstanding unvested Cloud Light options. The transaction has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies and by Cloud Light’s shareholders.

The acquisition of Cloud Light is expected to accelerate Lumentum’s push into the fastest growing segments of the multibillion-dollar opportunity for optical modules used in cloud computing data center infrastructure. Cloud Light has a demonstrated track record of developing and manufacturing the highest-speed connectivity solutions at the leading edge of new and rapidly growing technology transitions. Nearly all of Cloud Light’s more than $200M revenue in the last 12 months was derived from 400G or higher speed transceiver sales. In the most recent quarter, over half of Cloud Light’s optical transceiver revenue was derived from 800G modules.

With this acquisition, Lumentum will be well-positioned to serve the growing needs of cloud and networking customers, particularly those focused on optimizing their data center infrastructure for the demands of AI/ML. Lumentum will be able to deliver immediate customer value with a more comprehensive product and technology portfolio, enabling customers to more effectively manage the escalating compute and interconnect requirements of AI workloads. The combination also brings best-in-class design and assembly, test, and packaging capabilities together with Lumentum’s global scale and customer reach.

“With Cloud Light, we are making a strategic investment to significantly expand our opportunities in the cloud data center and networking infrastructure space,” said Alan Lowe, Lumentum president and CEO. “Cloud Light provides us with the highest speed transceiver solutions at scale and complements our advanced component capabilities. This results in a broad product and technology portfolio that addresses a wide range of cloud operator needs.”

“We are confident that this transaction will deliver substantial, long-term value to our stockholders, with immediate earnings accretion and accelerated revenue growth. We look forward to welcoming Cloud Light’s very talented team to Lumentum,” concluded Mr. Lowe.

“Today’s announcement is a pivotal milestone in the history of Cloud Light, and a testament to the hard work and dedication of our employees,” said Dr. Dennis Tong, Cloud Light Founder and CEO. “We founded the company with a vision that our deep expertise in high-volume precision manufacturing would result in a superior value proposition for cloud data center customers. Having worked closely with the technology teams within leading cloud operators, we believe we can build upon our success to date and further accelerate cloud data center growth by combining Lumentum’s advanced photonic integration and transmission technologies with our highly automated packaging and manufacturing processes. We look forward to joining the Lumentum team and beginning an exciting new chapter.”

Compelling Strategic and Financial Benefits

• Captures AI inflection with expanded intra-data center opportunity: The highly complementary combination squarely positions Lumentum as a leader in providing photonics to cloud operators, enabling more than a five-fold expansion in the company’s served opportunity inside of data centers. With the advent of generative AI, cloud network needs for 400G and higher speed optical transceivers have accelerated rapidly, with the opportunity for these intra-data center products anticipated to grow at a 30% CAGR and exceed $10B by 2028. Cloud Light provides the highest speed optical transceiver products to leading hyperscale cloud customers, with even higher-speed solutions well along in their development, complementing Lumentum’s existing portfolio of laser transmitters and other integrated components for data center transceivers.

• Better equipped to address future customer roadmaps: AI models are driving an exponential increase in compute requirements, where performance is now doubling every 3 to 4 months, compared to the historical doubling every two years according to Moore’s Law. Scaling workloads even higher is limited by existing network and interconnect bottlenecks. With the addition of Cloud Light, Lumentum better addresses these challenges – both now and into the future – by combining advanced optical interconnect technologies based on chip-scale photonic integration, together with highly automated packaging and manufacturing technologies.

• More strategic partner to cloud and AI infrastructure customers: With Cloud Light, Lumentum can more effectively address the growing and diverse needs of cloud operator and AI infrastructure providers. This includes providing next-generation optical connectivity and optical switching within data centers, as well as coherent pluggable modules and optical line system components for data center interconnect applications. With Lumentum’s vertical integration capabilities in components and diversity in its global manufacturing footprint, customers can benefit from improved security of supply and superior technology and cost roadmaps.

• Amplifies edge and metro networking opportunities: Cloud Light’s proven capabilities in low-cost product development and high-volume manufacturing are relevant not only for cloud data center and data center interconnect solutions, but also for network edge applications, including those served by direct detect and coherent tunable DWDM transceivers. A broader set of networking customers will benefit from the added advanced packaging technologies and manufacturing capabilities offered by this combination.

• Immediately accretive to Lumentum’s earnings and accelerates Lumentum growth: The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to Lumentum’s non-GAAP earnings per share and is expected to more than double Lumentum’s cloud data center infrastructure revenue in the 12-month period following the transaction close. In the last twelve months, over 90 percent of Cloud Light’s revenue was derived from 400G and higher speed products, and in their most recent quarter, over half of Cloud Light’s optical transceiver revenue was derived from 800G transceiver products.

Transaction Financing and Approvals

Lumentum intends to finance the transaction through cash from its balance sheet. The transaction is expected to close by the end of calendar 2023, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Advisors

BofA Securities served as the exclusive financial advisor to Lumentum and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Professional Corporation served as legal advisor. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP served as legal advisor to Cloud Light.

Usercentrics, a leading provider of consent management solutions, has reported on shockingly low rates of GDPR compliance in multiple industries in the European Union. This lack of attention on data privacy and user consent is about to get even riskier with Digital Markets Act (DMA) enforcement beginning March 6, 2024.

No consent, no revenue: The Digital Markets Act's wake-up call for advertisers

While the DMA most directly affects the six “gatekeeper” companies designated by the European Commission — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft — it’s often overlooked that it will also affect all companies with digital operations in the EU that rely on those six tech giants’ platforms and services.

“The DMA will be a big wake up call for a lot of companies. It basically means: no consent, no revenue. It’s not just an additional regulation requiring companies with business in the EU and EEA to obtain explicit consent from users before processing their personal data. On top of it, gatekeepers will likely require companies using their services for advertising, ecommerce, analytics and more to adopt compliant consent management processes”, explains Donna Dror, CEO of Usercentrics.

Failing to comply with the Digital Markets Act is a very expensive risk for the gatekeepers. However, for third parties, failing to comply is no less risky, as they would face the loss of data, audience and revenue that would come with losing access to the user base, data and services Google, Meta, and others provide.

Save your advertising revenue and analytics data: Usercentrics gets you ready for the DMA

The good news is that Digital Markets Act compliance and meeting the gatekeepers’ requirements is easy to achieve. With Usercentrics and Cookiebot Consent Management Platforms (CMPs), companies can inform users about what data is collected, for what purposes, and with whom it may be shared. Then they can collect and store valid consent, which they can signal to gatekeepers.

The CMPs' make DMA compliance effortless by enabling direct integrations with leading web and ecommerce content management systems (CMS), including WordPress, Magento, HubSpot, Joomla, and Shopify. Additionally, they provide support for app and TV platforms, as well as cross-platform frameworks like iOS, Android, Unity, and React.