RHT Recoups Losses: FYQ4 Rev Misses; Q1, Year Views Miss

Enterprise software vendor Red Hat (RHT) this afternoon reported fiscal Q4 revenue that missed consensus estimates and earnings per share that beat expectations.

Revenue in the three months ended in February rose 17%, year over year, to $348 million, yielding EPS of 36 cents.

Analysts had been modeling $349 million and 30 cents a share excluding some costs.

Shares are down $3.47, or 7%, at $46.50 $6.08, or over 12%, at $43.89,

CEO Jim Whitehurst remarked,

Within total backlog, the value of customer contracts to be billed in the future and not reflected in our financial statements increased to over $280 million, or up over 40%, as customers increased their commitments to Red Hat technologies in the data center. We continued to see momentum with large deals in Q4, closing a record number of deals in excess of $5 million and $10 million. We now provide solutions to over 90% of Fortune 500 companies as well as tens of thousands of smaller companies. New customer additions coupled with renewing and up-selling our existing customer base enabled us to exceed the billion dollar milestone in both subscription revenue and deferred revenues for the first time.

Red Hat will host a conference call with analysts at 5 pm, Eastern time, and you can catch the webcast of that call on the company’s investor relations page.

The results are weighing on some other enterprise software names. Shares of Citrix Systems (CTXS) are down $1.60, or 2%, at $69.80 in late trading. Oracle (ORCL) shares are down 12 cents at $31.83.�VMware (VMW) are down $1.36, or 1.4%, at $77.20.

Update: During the call, management forecast revenue this quarter of $358 million to $361 million, and EPS of 30 cents to 31 cents. That is below the consensus for $367 million and 32 cents.

For the full year, the company sees revenue of $1.51 billion to $1.54 billion, and EPS of $1.31 to $1.35. That is below the consensus for $1.55 billion and $1.38.

Red Hat have recouped much of their after-hours loss and are now down just� 36 cents, or 1.2%, at $49.61.