UPDATE: Bank of America Upgrades Red Hat to Buy

Bank of America has published a research report on Red Hat

and has upgraded the company from Neutral to Buy based on the company's free cash flow. In the report, Bank of America writes, "RHT continues to validate our thesis on RHEL 6 product cycle. Multiple growth levers are coming to fruition--free to pay conversion, RHEL 6 ASP lift, JBoss cross-sell, and RHEV attach. RHT benefits from broadening customer base and expansion into additional verticals. Increased investment in sales hiring and infrastructure lays the foundation for future growth. We think RHT already has the scale and brand recognition to continue to benefit from the increasing share of open source software in data centers." Bank of America raises the price objective from $52 to $61 on Red Hat, which is currently trading up $8.05 from yesterday's $51.44 closing price.