Red Hat Profit Rises 28%

(RTTNews) - Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), the world's largest seller of Linux software, said Thursday after the markets closed that its first quarter profit rose 28% from last year, as revenue increased 14%.

The company's quarterly earnings per share, excluding items, also came in above expectations as did its quarterly revenue.

"Our solid start to fiscal year 2016 was evidenced by strong constant currency revenue growth of over 20%," said Jim Whitehurst, President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat. "This strong growth reflects in part the demand for our open, hybrid cloud technologies across four footprints: bare metal, virtualization, private cloud and public cloud deployments."

Red Hat shares are currently losing 0.94% in after hours trading after closing the day's regular trading session at $78.49, up 23 cents. The shares trade in a 52-week range of $52.53 to $79.35.

For the first quarter ended May 31, 2015, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based company reported net income of $48.1 million or $0.26 per share, compared to $37.7 million or $0.20 per share for the year-ago quarter.

Excluding items, adjusted net income for the first quarter was $81.5 million or $0.44 per share, compared to $64.2 million or $0.34 per share in the prior year quarter.

On average, 31 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $0.41 per share for the first quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Total revenue for the first quarter rose 14% to $481.00 million from $423.75 million in the same quarter last year. Twenty-eight analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $472.59 million for the first quarter.

Subscription revenue for the quarter also increased 14% to $424.8 million.

The company ended the quarter with total deferred revenue balance of $1.44 billion, up 13% from a year earlier.