Red Hat Jumps in the After Hours

Shares of Red Hat RHT are trading higher in the after-hours following the release of its Q1 earnings results. Currently, shares are higher by 3.11%, trading at $45.08; they ended the session lower by 0.07%, at $43.72. Red Hat said that Q1 EPS came in at $0.24 on revenues of $264.7 million; the Street was at $0.22 per share on revenues of $253.8 million. Revenues increased 26.6% year over year. Red Hat also noted Q1 operating cash flow of $90.2 million, up from $60.6 million a year ago. "Red Hat has begun fiscal year 2012 with a strong first quarter including year-over-year billings growth of 28% that contributed to revenue and profitability that exceeded the high-end of our expectations," stated Jim Whitehurst, President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat. "We believe there is a fundamental shift in IT spending, in which cloud computing and virtualization have become key strategic priorities. We believe that Red Hat is well positioned to capitalize on this growing demand as enterprise customers look to Red Hat when upgrading and modernizing their IT infrastructure." Red Hat, Inc. is engaged in providing open source software solutions to the enterprise, including its core enterprise operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, its enterprise middleware platform, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, its virtualization solutions and other Red Hat enterprise technologies.