Somewhat Negative News Coverage Likely to Impact Red Hat (RHT) Stock Price

Posted by on Apr 13th, 2017

News headlines about Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) have been trending somewhat negative recently, Alpha One Sentiment Analysis reports. The research group, a division of Accern, scores the sentiment of media coverage by reviewing more than twenty million news and blog sources in real-time. Alpha One ranks coverage of public companies on a scale of -1 to 1, with scores nearest to one being the most favorable. Red Hat earned a media sentiment score of -0.02 on Alpha One’s scale. Alpha One also assigned media stories about the open-source software company an impact score of 70 out of 100, indicating that recent media coverage is likely to have an effect on the stock’s share price in the next few days.

These are some of the media stories that may have impacted AlphaOne Sentiment’s scoring:

Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) traded up 0.14% during midday trading on Tuesday, hitting $85.16. The stock had a trading volume of 957,746 shares. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $83.78 and its 200 day moving average price is $78.68. Red Hat has a 12-month low of $68.54 and a 12-month high of $88.05. The stock has a market cap of $15.14 billion, a P/E ratio of 61.27 and a beta of 1.44. Red Hat also was the target of unusually large options trading on Monday. Stock investors bought 200 put options on the stock. This is an increase of approximately 117% compared to the average daily volume of 92 put options.

Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) last issued its earnings results on Monday, March 27th. The open-source software company reported $0.61 EPS for the quarter, hitting the Thomson Reuters’ consensus estimate of $0.61. The business earned $628.80 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $618.64 million. Red Hat had a return on equity of 20.57% and a net margin of 10.36%. Red Hat’s revenue was up 15.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $0.52 earnings per share. On average, equities research analysts predict that Red Hat will post $2.63 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Several analysts have recently issued reports on RHT shares. Drexel Hamilton upped their price objective on Red Hat to $110.00 in a research report on Tuesday, March 28th. Rosenblatt Securities restated a “buy” rating and issued a $95.00 price objective on shares of Red Hat in a research report on Monday, December 26th. Deutsche Bank AG restated a “buy” rating and issued a $90.00 price objective (down from $95.00) on shares of Red Hat in a research report on Friday, December 23rd. Needham & Company LLC restated a “buy” rating and issued a $89.00 price objective (down from $98.00) on shares of Red Hat in a research report on Friday, December 23rd. Finally, Mizuho reduced their price objective on Red Hat from $88.00 to $80.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, December 22nd. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have given a hold rating and twenty-one have given a buy rating to the stock. The stock presently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $90.60.

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In other news, EVP Delisa Alexander sold 1,365 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, January 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $72.83, for a total value of $99,412.95. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now owns 55,450 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,038,423.50. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, CEO James M. Whitehurst sold 5,099 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, March 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $83.69, for a total value of $426,735.31. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 429,072 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $35,909,035.68. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 81,487 shares of company stock valued at $6,789,220. 0.76% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

About Red Hat

Red Hat, Inc (Red Hat) provides open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to develop and offer operating system, virtualization, management, middleware, cloud, mobile and storage technologies. Red Hat operates through three geographical segments: the Americas, including the United States, Canada and Latin America; EMEA, including Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific.

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