Red Hat In The Black Again With $3.3M Profit

For the second quarter of its 2004 fiscal year, the leading Linux company posted a profit of $3.3 million, or 2 cents per share, on roughly $29 million in revenue.

That compares with a profit of $1.5 million during the previous fiscal quarter, and a loss of $1.9 million for the comparable quarter a year ago. Revenue for the second quarter of fiscal year 2004 increased 6 percent from the prior quarter and year-over-year by 36 percent, the company said on Thursday.

The company's second-quarter net operating profit was $240,000, compared with a net operating loss of $1.1 million in the prior quarter and a net operating loss of $4.7 million during the comparable quarter a year ago.

The Raleigh, N.C.-based commercial vendor of open-source Linux software announced its first-ever profit of $305,000 last December, reflecting performance during its third quarter of fiscal 2003 that ended in November 2003.

Red Hat attributed the gain during its second fiscal quarter of 2004 to an increase in subscriptions of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux line by 2,300, or 10 percent, from last quarter. The company now has 26,000 subscriptions.

Revenue from the company's enterprise technologies--its business products segment--grew 21 percent sequentially and 123 percent year-over-year, Red Hat also said. The company is getting set to officially launch its next-generation Enterprise Linux 3 line in October.