UPDATE: Piper Jaffray Raising Price Target On Red Hat

Piper Jaffray is raising its price target on shares of Red Hat Inc.

to $59 from $57 after it reported earnings. It has an Overweight rating on shares. In a note to clients, Piper Jaffray writes, "Red Hat reported Q1 results above consensus and also raised FY12 guidance ahead of expectations. Strong demand for open source Cloud infrastructure drove billings growth of 28%, materially above consensus of 19%. Results correlated to our recent survey findings, which indicated resellers finished above plan and observed an improving pace of business. We see ongoing catalysts, as our survey work foreshadows RHEL6 adoption picking up in the latter half of the year, and as RHT's inroads into the Windows server market continue to gather steam. Fundamentals remain very strong for RHT, in our view. Reiterate Overweight, raising target to $59." Shares of RHT are up $2.28 to $46.00, a gain of over 5% in pre-market trading.