Portman Ridge Finance Corporation (Nasdaq: PTMN) (the "Company”), a business development company, today announced that it has entered into a Rule 10b5-1 stock trading plan to facilitate the repurchase of shares of its common stock in accordance with its $10 million share repurchase program previously announced on March 9, 2020. An independent U.S. broker-dealer is acting as the Company’s agent to purchase its shares on pre-arranged terms pursuant to the Rule 10b5-1 plan during a period beginning on August 31, 2020 and ending on March 5, 2020.
Repurchases may be made in the open market at prevailing market prices from time to time as market conditions warrant. All repurchases will be implemented in accordance with the applicable requirements of Rules 10b5-1 and 10b-18 under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
About Portman Ridge Finance Corporation
Portman Ridge Finance Corporation (NASDAQ: PTMN) is a publicly traded, externally managed investment company that has elected to be regulated as a business development company under the Investment Company Act of 1940. Portman Ridge Finance Corporation’s middle market investment business originates, structures, finances and manages a portfolio of term loans, mezzanine investments and selected equity securities in middle market companies. PTMN’s investment activities are managed by its investment adviser, Sierra Crest Investment Management LLC, an affiliate of BC Partners Advisors, LP.
Portman Ridge Finance Corporation's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC”), earnings releases, press releases and other financial, operational and governance information are available on the Company's website at www.portmanridge.com.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding repurchases of shares of the Company’s common stock. There is no assurance that repurchases will be made in any specific amounts or that the market price of the Company’s shares, either absolutely or relative to net asset value, will increase as a result of any share repurchases, or that any repurchases will enhance stockholder value over the long term. The forward-looking statements should be read in conjunction with the risks and uncertainties discussed in the Company’s filings with the SEC, including the Company’s most recent Form 10-K and other SEC filings.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan, Jan. 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Avalanche Computing, a hyper-scale computing technique provider based in Taipei and the Bay Area, has developed a one-click-through AI framework that allows for production speed and is highly scalable.
Avalanche Computing's AI framework effectively trains your AI model in parallel or distributed mode on multiple GPUs without changing the algorithm for reducing AI project costs, and then does AI model deployment from one to many edge devices in one command.
Avalanche Computing focuses on optimizing the deep learning environment and training in parallel, lightening the trained model, and then deploying the AI model at a hyper-scale. The proposed AI framework helps increase the speed of manufacturing and medical applications, including predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, machine diagnosis, defect detection, supply chain analysis, operation optimization, EGG signal, breath sound, medical signal, medical speech to text, anomaly detection, lung cancer detection, and more.
Turnkey Solution for AI Development and Deployment
"Our mission is to help our customers who focus on intelligence services and applications save time, staff numbers, and money during AI development. With our deep tech and computing domain knowledge, we aim to provide an excellent workflow for AI development and deployment in one platform at scale. Besides, our many alliance partners, academic collaborations, and computing hardware partners have further helped our AI customers succeed in global business," said Avalanche Founder and CEO Jay Chen.
"With our AI experience with global enterprises, we can help customers achieve high-speed AI training, reduce waiting time, and quickly scale the inference system without building a new engineer team."
Developing AI to Suit Different Needs across Different Industries
Chen said his company currently serves more than 15 enterprise-level manufacturing and medical AI companies and SMEs. Avalanche's focus markets include the USA, Japan, Taiwan, and a several European countries, with target sectors including smart manufacturing, Industry 4.0, smart medical, and more. He related that his company has worked globally with NVidia SA, cloud service providers, and many software partners as well as with two accelerators, including NTUTEC and NTPC-AWS Joint Innovation Center.
Avalance began tactical planning for expanding into the Japan and US markets in 2019. This year (2020), the company joined the NTU Corporate Accelerator Program (with AUO), TSS Lineup, and NVidia Inception Program; won AIdea first prizes in many categories; and was selected as an Airbus DDMS International Startups top-10 finalist. Avalanche Computing was selected by Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) as one of the 100 featured Taiwanese startups showcased at CES 2021.
A Significant Team with High Potential
Avalanche Computing Taiwan was founded by MOST LEAP members, NVidia alumni, professors, and serial entrepreneurs who embrace the company's mission to help businesses without sufficient AI expertise to implement AI and transform the world together.
Avalance Computing Co-Founder Jay Chen earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science at National Taiwan University. His research interests include big data analytics, cloud computing, and mobile data analysis. He was involved in deep learning and AI framework performance optimization at Nvidia. He has over 15 years of experience in big data analysis. He is a Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society member (Award in 2006 and 2016) and co-founder of the NTU Design Thinking Club. At Avalanche Computing, Jay provides technical support for smart manufacturing, smart medical, and more.
Avalanche Computing Co-Founder, C.W. Huang earned his master's degree at National Taiwan University as well. His research thesis focused on machine learning, computer vision, and data mining. He has competed in numerous machine learning competitions and earned many recognitions, including a silver medal in the 4037-participant "Quora Insincere Question Classification" challenge hosted by Kaggle and a bronze medal in the "APTOS 2019 Blindness Detection" competition. At Avalanche, he developed a real-time breathing sound detection AI system in partnership with a smart medical technology corporation.
CES 2021 TTA-VR Pavilion: https://pse.is/39wsem
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SOURCE Avalanche Computing
Meena Harris.
Meena HarrisMeena Harris, niece of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, has written her second children's book, entitled "Ambitious Women." Illustrations were done by artist Marissa Valdez.
In the book, a young girl watches a woman on television be called "too ambitious" and "too assertive." In response, she vows to become a persistent, assertive, confident, and proud individual.
Harris has been working to get this book — in addition to her last one — into schools and has partnered with the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books to donate hundreds of book copies to educators and students.
Ahead of her aunt's inauguration, Harris talks to Insider about her new book, and what is needed to raise the next generation of ambitious women.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The plight of an unapologetically ambitious woman is well documented. Meena Harris is one of those women.
The entrepreneur founded Phenomenal Woman, which creates products addressing sociopolitical injustices, and has another career as a children's author. Her latest endeavor is a children's book entitled "Ambitious Girl." Set to be released on January 19, the book tells the story of a young girl who learns to embrace her ambitions in life.
The book comes a year after the release of Harris' first book, "Kamala and Maya's Big Idea," which was inspired by Meena and her aunt, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. (That became a New York Times best-seller, and more recently, a video that Meena posted of her aunt exceeded 10 million views on TikTok.)
"For young girls to see someone who looks like them elected, to the second-highest office in the land, is really an incredible feeling that we've all been fighting for a very long time," she told Insider. Previously, Meena Harris spoke to Insider about her career paths and growing up in a family of lawyers - ambitious women who inspired her to become who she is today.
When it comes to women, the word ambition often has a negative connotation, Harris said. Last year, Insider reported on a study by American Express and The New York Women's Foundation, which found that many women didn't like using the word ambitious to describe themselves and wanted to use the word "motivated" instead.
Read more: Alicia Keys is partnering with American Express on 'The Ambition Project' to empower women. Here's how it will expand their access to senior positions - and already has.
"Language has power and words have meaning," Harris told Insider. "We do not typically hear ambition being used against men, or used to critique men. I don't think I've ever really heard that before. It's about reclaiming and redefining words that, even though they're just words, we know they have power."
Ahead of her aunt's big day, Meena Harris spoke to Insider about her new children's book, what she learned growing up in a powerhouse family, and what else is needed to raise the next generation of ambitious women.
'It's not just the work of women to do on behalf of other women,' Harris said
Raising ambitious women starts earlier than one might expect, which is why Harris decided to put the topic in a children's book. "There's a lot of unlearning and relearning around our bias against female ambitious and women in power," she said. "It's never too early."
Her family always tried to lead by example when it came to inspiring each other, she said. Ambition was a good thing to have in her family - and ambitious women were all she knew.
"I grew up in a family of strong, ambitious women," she said. "My grandmother Shyamala, a cancer researcher and civil rights activist, raised my mom and aunt - and later helped raise me - to fight for change and be role models for others," she said. "She would say to us, 'You may be the first, but don't be the last. It's actually a line I put into my new book 'Ambitious Girl.' "
After graduating from Stanford University and Harvard Law, she had a brief legal career and held jobs at both Slack and Uber. As reported by the New York Times' Jessica Testa, she was also a campaign surrogate for her aunt. As she entered the workplace, she told Insider, she realized that many women weren't raised to see ambition as a good thing.
Read more: Kamala Harris' niece is publishing a picture book on women's ambition. She told us why she never 'sugarcoats' the reality of racism and sexism when talking to her kids.
"It's a very worthwhile activity to sit down with your kids and start early to define these words," she said. "On the topic of leading by example, there are many ways that you can demonstrate what it means. And at the very least, encourage them to understand [ambition] as a positive, not a negative."
Courtesy of LaRue PR
In her latest book, a young girl takes advice from the women around her, including her mother and her grandmother, who teaches her the importance of growing up assertive, confident, and proud. Harris said that listening to the dreams and career paths of other people is a good way to teach people how to embrace their own ambition. It shows that ambition isn't a "dirty" word and having dreams is not a "bad" thing.
This is a lesson that needs to be taught, not just to young women, but to everyone, she said. Because creating an environment that can foster ambitious women is not something left up to women to create. This act requires a complete societal and cultural shift, Harris said.
"It's about a patriarchal society," she continued. "It's not just the work of women to do on behalf of other women. Men who, by default have more power in the world and in most of these systems, it's up to them to do that as well."
In the meantime, all women have to do to be ambitious, is to simply not hide their ambition, she said. It's about wearing that sweatshirt embroiled with the word ambitious on it, she said. It's about naming what you want and claiming it for yourself - writing your dreams and building toward what you want. For instance, Harris has plans to release more books. "There's still so much work to do, especially when it comes to increasing diversity in publishing," she said. "I definitely have plans for more books - I can't wait to explore topics for older audiences as well."
It's about changing the language that one associates with their dreams, to reflect the positivity of what it means to aspire. "This is literally about as cheesy as it sounds, but what are your hopes and dreams?" she said. "The beauty of that is, it means different things to so many different people."
