Shares of Red Hat increased as much as 5% in after-hours trading. The shares of the company soared after it posted strong quarterly results, which beat past Wall Street's expectations.

About 2,971,552 shares were traded during trading session, marking 130% from the earlier session's volume.

Red Hat reported $0.43 EPS for the quarter and with this, it beat the Thomson Reuters consensus estimate of $0.41 by $0.02. The company had generated revenue of $464.00 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus prediction of $456.80 million. It posted $0.39 earnings per share during the same quarter in the previous year.

Red Hat CEO and President Jim Whitehurst said that the company strategy and its movement towards open hybrid cloud technologies led to strong results.

According to Whitehurst, "Customers value the consistency and flexibility as they run their applications using Red Hat solutions across a variety of deployment models, including public and private clouds, to modernize and transform their IT infrastructure. We believe that our strategic position as a trusted provider of infrastructure".

He also said that their execution in the past year has prepared them for strong constant currency revenue growth in the next fiscal year. In a research note on Monday, Cantor Fitzgerald analysts set a $81.00 price target on Red Hat shares and also gave the company a 'buy' rating. Analysts at Oppenheimer gave an 'outperform' rating and set a $80.00 price target on shares of Red Hat in a research note on Monday.

Analysts at Barclays set a $77.00 price target on shares of Red Hat and reiterated an 'overweight' rating in a research note on Friday, March 20.