Red Hat Shares Slump After Penny Miss

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Red Hat (RHT) were falling in late trades after software developer missed Wall Street's profit expectations for its latest quarter.

The Raleigh, N.C.-based company posted non-GAAP earnings of $54.9 million, or 28 cents a share, on revenue of $322.6 million for the three months ended in August. The per-share profit was a penny short of the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters for earnings of 29 cents a share in the company's fiscal second quarter.

The consensus view was for revenue of $322.2 million, so Red Hat did manage a slight beat on the top line with 15% year-over-year growth driven by strength in subscription revenue, which totaled $278.8 million for the latest quarter.

"Our double-digit growth was driven by demand for Red Hat's open source technologies that are key to creating innovation, scale and flexibility in our customers' data centers and their businesses," stated Jim Whitehurst, the company's president and CEO, in a statement.

The stock, which was up nearly 40% year-to-date based on Monday's regular session close at $57.54, was last quoted at $56.01, down 2.7%, on extended volume of more than 200,000, according to Nasdaq.com.

Red Hat generated $103.9 million in operating cash flow during the quarter, up from $77.1 million in the same period last year. Deferred revenue at the end of the quarter was $944.4 million, a rise of 16% annually. Red Hat ended the quarter with $1.36 billion in cash.

The company plans to hold a conference call at 5 p.m. EST to discuss the results.

Shares of Red Hat fell Monday, losing 0.17% to close at $57.54. In after-hours trading, the stock is moving lower, losing 1.93% to $56.43 according to Nasdaq.com.

Interested in more on Red Hat? See TheStreet Ratings' report card for this stock.

--Written by Chris Ciaccia in New York

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