“Red Hat President and CEO Matthew Szulik was recently a
guest on The Motley Fool radio show. David Gardner and Szulik
discussed a number of issues, including the future of the company,
the Linux operating system, and Microsoft….“
“About a year ago, we had former Red Hat CEO Robert Young on our
show and Red Hat stock then was trading about $40 per share. It
went up as high as $150 per share and now trades around $15. Why do
you think the public markets have punished Red Hat?”
“Szulik: I think the public markets have punished most tech
stocks. It is a disruptive technology and we are at a very early
stage of the business cycle and market acceptance, competing
against two very large competitors — Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq:
SUNW) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). If you look at the economics of
our business and growth rate, and the acceptance of open source
globally, it’s absolutely phenomenal. And I do believe the media
certainly did a good job of placing a lot of spotlight and
enthusiasm at the very earliest stages of that cycle. Certainly, I
think we’re really at the early stage of that and feel the
prospects continue to remain very bright….”
“Can Red Hat compete with Microsoft?”
“Szulik: Absolutely. I think we’re doing a damn good job of it
already. Look how fast Red Hat Linux has now become the
second-leading server operating system in the world, Linux and Red
Hat Linux. And if you look at the market opportunity — if you
believe what Forrester, IDC and other major research companies say
— that the devices will become the source of access and commerce
for the Internet by the year 2004, that market is still
virgin.”