Red Hat CFO to Depart, Profit Rises 45%

By Josh Beckerman 

Red Hat Inc. said its chief financial officer will step down in late January as the open-source software company posted a 45% profit increase for the latest quarter.

Shares fell 13.3% to $69.16 in after-hours trading.

CFO Frank Calderoni is leaving to become chief executive at a company that wasn't named. Eric Shander, vice president of finance and accounting, will act as CFO pending a decision on a permanent replacement.

Mr. Calderoni joined Red Hat in June 2015 after serving as CFO of Cisco Systems Inc.

For the current quarter, Red Hat expects earnings of excluding items of 61 cents a share on revenue of $614 million to $622 million. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters projected 61 cents and $637.3 million, respectively.

Red Hat, known for its OpenStack platform, has expanded its storage technology business in recent years, and has benefited from the rise of cloud computing and big data.

In the fiscal third quarter ended Nov. 30, the company earned $67.9 million, or 37 cents a share, compared with $46.8 million, or 26 cents a share, a year earlier. Earnings excluding items were 61 cents a share. Revenue rose 18% to $615.3 million.

The company had projected adjusted earnings of 58 cents a share on revenue of $613 million to $623 million.

Red Hat said its deferred revenue balance at the end of the quarter was $1.7 billion, up 15%.

Write to Josh Beckerman at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 21, 2016 17:45 ET (22:45 GMT)

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