1. Lower profit beats estimates
The company, which is known for its Linux Open Stack platform, said net profits for the third quarter ending November 30 hit $47m, or 26 cents per share, from $52m a year ago, as sales rose 15% to $456m.
Analysts on average had expected a profit of 40 cents per share on revenue of $451.2m, according to data compiled by Thompson Reuters.
The firm, which bought mobile app firm Feed Henry in September, put the growth down to higher demand for its software used in data centres and cloud computing.
"Cloud computing and big data trends are driving increased demand for open source technologies," said CEO and president Jim Whitehurst.
"We believe our leadership position in the open source industry and broad portfolio of Open Hybrid Cloud technologies creates a strong position for Red Hat to capture market share in the cloud-enabled data centre."
2. CFO quits
Red Hat also announced that CFO Charles E. Peters plans to retire in the next 12 months. Peters, who took the role in 2004, noted that Red Hat’s annual revenue has expanded from $150 million when he took the job to nearly $1.8 billion this year.
3. Outlook
Red Hat boosted its revenue projections and now expects annual revenue will come in between $1.8bn and $1.785 billion.
It also expects an adjusted profit of $1.57-$1.58 per share for the full year, up from its previous forecast of $1.53-$1.55.
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4. IBM and Red Hat partnership
Earlier this week, Red Hat announced the launch of its Enterprise Virtualization for IBM’s Power Systems
The firms said that pairing Red Hat’s Linux operating system with IBM Power Systems will enable enterprises to achieve greater database and transactional speed, as well as lower their workload footprint.
