Revenues for the company consisted of $395 million in the Subscriptions segment and $61 million in the Training and Services segment. Overall revenues increased 15% from the same period in the previous year. Operating cash flow for the third quarter increased 40% to $133 million year-over-year from $95 million.
Red Hat also said that revenues would have been up 18% if measured on a constant currency basis. Also, this marked 51 quarters of sequential revenue growth. The company ended its quarter with $1.65 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
Another key aspect of the quarter was that Red Hat completed an $805 million convertible debt offering. It used a portion of the proceeds to enter into convertible note hedge transactions for a net cost of approximately $68 million and an accelerated stock repurchase transaction for $375 million — and it delivered approximately 5.3 million shares of its common stock for that buyback.
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We have seen many analysts lift targets and estimates for Red Hat. Shares were indicated up 10% at $68 or so, a new 52-week high. BMO Capital Markets raised its price target to $77, Needham raised its target to $75 and Oppenheimer raised its target to $80. Other positive analyst calls were out as well from Piper Jaffray, Stifel, Northland Securities and RBC Capital.
The company did not give guidance for the coming quarter but seemed optimistic, based on past performance, as President and CEO Jim Whitehurst said:
Our strong Q3 results marked the eleventh straight quarter of mid-to-high teens revenue growth as we continued to reinforce and expand our strategic relationship with our customers. Cloud computing and big data trends are driving increased demand for open source technologies. 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 center.
Shares of Red Hat closed Thursday up 3% at $61.50. Following the release of the earnings report, the reaction in Friday’s premarket trading was positive and shares were up nearly 11% at $68.15. The shares have a 52-week trading range of $47.45 to $63.69.
It is worth noting that the new high is not just a 52-week high or even a multiyear high. This is a high that goes all the way back to the tech bubble in 2000. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $67.44, and the market cap is over $11 billion.
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