Red Hat Beats Q1 Estimates

reported upbeat results for its fiscal first quarter on Thursday. The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company posted quarterly net income of $48.1 million, or $0.26 per share, compared to $37.7 million, or $0.20 per share, in the year-ago period. Excluding one-time items, the company earned $0.44 per share. Its revenue climbed to $481.0 million from $423.8 million. However, analysts were expecting a profit of $0.41 per share on revenue of $472.59 million. The average estimate among 25 Estimize users was for earnings of $0.42 per share and revenue of $475.08 million. Subscription revenue rose 14 percent to $425 million for the quarter. GAAP operating income rose 39 percent year-over-year to $71 million for the first quarter. Operating cash flow gained 27 percent to $209 million for the first quarter. At quarter end, total deferred revenue balance rose 13 percent year-over-year to $1.44 billion. As of May 31, 2015, total cash, cash equivalents and investments was $1.97 billion. "Our solid start to fiscal year 2016 was evidenced by strong constant currency revenue growth of over 20%," stated 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's portfolio of technologies becomes increasingly strategic to customers who are looking to expand their capabilities and agility to build and deploy applications across these data center footprints." Red Hat shares slipped 2.40 percent to $76.61 in the after-hours trading session.