Sales Surge Lifts Red Hat

Stock quotes in this article: RHT , MSFT , ORCL , NOVL  

Before today's session, shares of Red Hat were off about 34% on the year.

CFO Charlie Peters said on a conference call with analysts that the company is "cautiously optimistic that competitive efforts by some of the largest technology companies in the world are actually expanding our opportunity."

Was he whistling in the dark? Trip Chowdhry, managing director Global Equities Research, said Oracle has misread the market for open source software. "Oracle thinks Linux support is a cost issue; it isn't. It's a business issue," he said. His company does not have an investment banking relationship with Red Hat or Oracle.

One measure of Oracle's damage to Red Hat would be a sharp drop in prices. Indeed, the giant database company promised to sharply undersell its smaller rival when it entered the Linux market earlier this year.

In a brief interview after the announcement, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik would not disclose his company's average selling prices, but did say that Red Hat is "showing better gross margins, better long-term deferred revenue [and other metrics]. Those are not indicative of major price cutting."

  • Loading Comments...
  •  
1 2
Next >

SHARE:

  • email
  • print
  • comment
  • digg
  • delicious
  • linkedin

Recent Comments





Connect with TheStreet

Dow Jones S&P 500 NASDAQ 10-Year Note
10,388.90 1,105.98 2,194.35 34.70
Oil *
76.82
UP
22.75
UP
6.06
UP
21.21
DOWN
0.13
10 Yr
3.47%
SPDR Gold
113.75
+0.22%
+0.55%
+0.98%
-0.37%
Data delayed 20 minutes

Brokerage Partners

TheStreet Premium Services

All Services