Red Hat Recognized in Separate Fastest-Growing Company Lists From FORTUNE and Business 2.0 Magazines

Red Hat Recognized in Separate Fastest-Growing Company Lists From FORTUNE and Business 2.0 Magazines

Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today announced that FORTUNE ranked Red Hat number 29 in the magazine’s 16th annual 100 Fastest-Growing Companies list and the company placed second in Business 2.0’s 100 Fastest-Growing Technology Companies. With a minority of technology companies included in FORTUNE’s rankings and the company’s high placement in Business 2.0’s list, Red Hat’s growth is proof that the demand for open source is growing while other traditional models are stagnant or declining.

“We are thrilled to have both FORTUNE and Business 2.0 recognize Red Hat for our growth and performance in the market and industry,” said Charlie Peters, CFO, Red Hat. “Our goal is to stay true to open source values, create extraordinary value and provide service worthy of the world’s largest companies.”

FORTUNE’s 100 Fastest-Growing Companies list this year featured a wide array of corporate America companies with the strongest three-year sales, profit and stock growth. To compute the rankings, FORTUNE used data from Zacks Investment Research and gave equal weight to three factors: profit and sales growth (for three years through the first quarter of 2006) and three-year total return (through June).

To find the 100 Fastest-Growing Technology Companies, Business 2.0 magazine screened a universe of more than 2,000 tech companies that have been publicly traded on a U.S. stock exchange for at least three years, have a market capitalization of at least $50 million and have had a positive operating cash flow over the past 12 months. Zacks Investment Research of Chicago ranked the resulting list using four financial criteria: growth in revenue, profit, operating cash flow during the past three years and 12-month stock return as of December 31, 2005. Cash flow growth counts for 40 percent of a company’s ranking. Each of the other criteria counts for 20 percent.

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