UPDATE: Credit Suisse Initiates Coverage on Red Hat with Outperform Rating, $70 PT on Position as Open-Source Leader

In a report published Friday, Credit Suisse analyst Sitikantha Panigrahi initiated coverage on

with an Outperform rating and $70.00 price target. In the report, Credit Suisse noted, “We are initiating coverage of Red Hat with an Outperform rating and a target price of $70. Red Hat is the de facto leader in open-source software and continues to gain share in the operating system market with its flagship product Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). In addition to RHEL's continued growth momentum, we also believe that the growing adoption of open source within mainstream IT has positioned Red Hat to increasingly upsell its newer products (JBoss middleware, Gluster storage, virtualization, and CloudForms), thereby driving further billings growth.” Red Hat closed on Thursday at $55.54.