Open source supplier Red Hat has posted strong financial results for the first quarter of the year, defying the downturn.
The North Carolina-based open source enterprise software company filed its numbers for the first quarter of its fiscal 2010 today, stashing away $18.5m (£11.35m) in net profit, up 6.9% year-on-year, and beating Wall Street estimates comfortably.
Meanwhile, sales bounced up 11% over the same period to $174m.
Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst praised "better than expected" revenues during the quarter, attributing the group's healthy performance to its subscription-based services model, which has kept the cash flowing at a critical time.
CFO Charlie Peters pointed to future investment in key growth areas, saying: "While we remain focused on managing discretionary costs and improving efficiencies, we also continue to invest in growth opportunities in middleware, virtualisation and cloud computing."
