Red Hat shares soar after company beats earnings expectations - Triangle Business Journal:

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Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) says net earningxs fell, to $16.2 million, in the quarte ended Feb. 28. That equates to 8 cents per dilutec share. The company earned $23 million, or 10 centss per diluted share, in the same quarter a year though those results were fueled bya one-timd gain of $4.7 million. Revenue increased, to $166.2 million, from $141.5 Red Hat sells “open-source software” developed by programmersa who freely share theirsource code. Red Hat offerx customized, business-specific versions of the software; the company makesw money by selling renewable subscriptionsx that come with fullcustomer support.
CEO Jim Whitehurst says programa such as Red Hat Enterprise an operating systemfor big-business applications, offee a good value – especially when compared to proprietarh offerings such as the various formse of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows. “Our valude proposition is even more compellinf in a challengingeconomic environment, and we believe that’s a key drive to our solid financial results and market shar e gains,” Whitehurst said in a statement. Red Hat’s revenue was in line with the averaged expectation of analysts polled byThomsonj Reuters.
Excluding one-time items, though, Red Hat earned 22 cents per topping analysts’ consensus expectation of 20 cents. The compan y said cost cuts and stoco buybacks helped it improveoperating margins. Excluding one-time costs, Red Hat says, operating marginws were 23.9 percent in the fourth fiscal quarter. That’d up from 22.1 percent a year earlier. In tradinyg Thursday, shares of Red Hat closed up by 17 to $17.60.