Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) is scheduled to release its most recent quarterly results after the markets close on Tuesday. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters call for $0.53 in earnings per share (EPS) and $647.84 million in revenue. The fiscal first-quarter of last year reportedly had EPS of $0.50 and $567.9 million in revenue.
In its most recent earnings report, the company gave its outlook for this quarter as EPS in the range of $0.52 to $0.53 and revenues between $643 million and $650 million.
The number of deals greater than $1 million in fiscal 2017 grew by over 30% annually, and the firm closed a record number of deals over $20 million, including its first-ever deal of approximately $100 million in the fourth quarter. This performance also drove a record backlog of $2.7 billion in U.S. dollars, up 28% year over year, which contributes to its fiscal year 2018 revenue outlook of 13% to 14% growth.
Last year the company formed a partnership with once bitter rival Microsoft that would bring more flexibility to hybrid cloud enterprise environments. Specifically, the partnership allows cloud products running under the Linux operating system to integrate with Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure, a huge move after years of competition.
Red Hat is currently the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. This company also offers award-winning support, training and consulting services.
Ahead of the earnings report, a few analysts weighed in on Red Hat:
- Sanford Bernstein has a Market Perform rating with a $102 price target.
- Oppenheimer has an Outperform rating with a $96 price target.
- MKM has a Neutral rating with an $82 price target.
- Goldman Sachs has a Sell rating with an $80 price target.
Over the course of this year, the stock is up 30% year to date, while over the past 52 weeks it is only up about 17%.
Shares of Red Hat were last seen at $90.66 on Tuesday, with a consensus analyst price target of $95.20 and a 52-week range of $68.54 to $92.49.
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