UPDATE: BMO Capital Markets Reiterates Outperform Rating, Lowers PT on Red Hat

In a report published Monday, BMO Capital Markets reiterated its Outperform rating on Red Hat

, but lowered its price target from $65.00 to $60.00. BMO Capital noted, “On a positive note, we understand that SUSE and Ubuntu are not seeing any demand weakness resulting from either IT budget pressure or the softness in the underlying server hardware market, a bullish read-through to Red Hat. Both rivals flagged the secular shift to scale-out computing and cloud infrastructures, trends that are very favorable to Linux. While these trends are early-stage and tilt in favor of free versions of Linux, the shift is a net positive for Red Hat. On a more cautious note, we do worry about the overall weak IT spending backdrop, and we're concerned that continued weakness in the underlying server market could skim off several points of billings growth for Red Hat in the coming quarters.” Red Hat closed on Friday at $48.34.