Red Hat beats Street, shares surge to nearly $100 :: Editor’s Blog at WRAL TechWire

Updated Jun. 21, 2017 at 7:25 a.m.

Red Hat beats Street, shares surge to nearly $100

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Red Hat, a global leader in Open Source Linux software and services as well as various cloud technologies, beats Wall Street expectations in both earnings and revenue. The news late Tuesday sent Hatters’ shares up immediately almost 10 percent to close to $100. And sales related to cloud offerings are helping drive the Hatters’ growth.

“The thing I want to emphasize is, unlike a lot of infrastructure software companies, we go from operating system all the way up, and the public cloud doesn’t replace us,” CEO Jim Whitehurst told Barron’s.

Red Hat shares haven’t topped $100 since Dec 1999 shortly after the company went public, according to data from Yahoo Finance.

Shares hit $98.50 within 15 minutes of the earnings report, up $8.54 from Tuesday’s close.

In pre-market trading early Wednesday, shares hit $99.40, or $9.44, a jump of 10.44 percent.

That’s higher than the previous 52-week high for RHT of $92.49.

Earnings of 56 cents per share topped Wall Street expectations by 3 cents. Sales of newer products such as OpenShift surged more than 40 percent compared to 14 percent growth in traditional Linux offerings.

And revenue surged more than 19 percent year-over-year to $676.8 million, soaring past expectations by almost $29 million.

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), which is based in Raleigh, itself had forecast revenue between $643-$650 million and earnings of 52 to 53 cents.

In its earnings release, Red Hat stressed:

  • First quarter total revenue of $677 million, up 19% year-over-year or 20% in constant currency
  • First quarter total subscription revenue of $597 million, up 19% year-over-year or 20% in constant currency
  • First quarter Application Development-related and other emerging technology subscription revenue of $139 million, up 41% year-over-year or 42% in constant currency
  • Quarter-end deferred revenue balance of $2.05 billion, up 21% year-over-year

“The first quarter was a strong start to FY18, with double digit growth across a number of our financial metrics, including 19% total revenue growth in U.S.dollars or 20% measured in constant currency and over 40% growth in our Application Development-related and other emerging technology revenue,” Whitehurst said in a statement.

“We continued to benefit from our ability to deliver important foundational and cloud enabling technologies, which help our customers to modernize and manage their infrastructure and application development platforms for the hybrid cloud.”

And Red Hat expects growth to continue.

“Revenue is expected to be approximately $695 million to $702 million,” the company said.

“The strength of the first quarter results was driven in part by robust global demand for our technologies and increased commitments from our largest customers,” pointed out CFO Eric Shander.

“The combination of our strong first quarter results, business momentum and solid execution by Red Hat associates has enabled us to increase our full year revenue outlook.”

Red Hat projects revenue to be approximately $2.785 billion to $2.825 billion.

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On – 21 Jun, 2017 By WRAL TechWire

Matthew F. Clark
Matthew F. Clark
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