RedHat rises on back of enterprise sales

A big jump in enterprise Linux licences helped increase Red Hat's sales by more than half in the fourth quarter.

For the three months ended 28 February, Red Hat sales were $57.5m (£31.9m), up 56% on the same quarter last year.

Quarterly net profits increased from $4.8m to $11.8m. For the full year, total sales increased 58% to $196.5m.

Red Hat said it sold a total of 175,000 new and renewed subscriptions in the fourth quarter, and its sales from the enterprise sector were $45.4m – a 92% jump on the same quarter last year.

The company recently released an upgraded version of its Linux enterprise server, which gives full support to the latest 2.6 Linux kernel.