Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) shares soared Friday, riding high on financial results that beat the company’s own guidance and shattered analyst estimates.

Shares in the the open source software company opened at $56.42 and reached a new 52-week high of $58.71 before settling down to close at $56.06, a 14 percent increase from Thursday’s closing price. 

(Read more about the earnings as reported earlier by WRALTechWire.)

Revenue in the fiscal 2014 third quarter was $397 million, a 15 percent year over year increase. The average revenue estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters was $383.11 million.

CFO Charlie Peters attributed the results in part to to a slowly improving global economy. Red Hat saw its strongest sales improvement in the Europe as well as the U.S. federal government. Peters said that after the government shutdown was over there was more clarity on what dollars were available to spend.

More than 30 deals in the quarter topped $1 million, Peters said. Four of them were for $5 million or more. But those deals were not what moved the needle on Red Hat’s revenue. Much of the revenue growth in the quarter came from a broad base of deals that were below $1 million.

“People are buying from us because they see the value and they like the technology,” Peters told analysts on a conference call Thursday to discuss financial results.

Red Hat has a recurring revenue model; 86 percent of sales comes from subscriptions to provide service and support for the company’s open source software offerings.

CEO Jim Whitehurst said Red Hat was able to renew 100 percent of its top 25 customers in the quarter. While Red Hat did not disclose any of those customers, Whitehurst said one of the top renewals was a global investment bank that had been a Red Hat Enterprise Linux customer for more than a decade. That customer purchased more services in what Whitehurst described as Red Hat’s “land and expand” strategy.

Red Hat’s net income for the quarter was $52 million, or 27 cents per diluted share. A year ago, Red Hat reported $35 million in net income, or 18 cents per diluted share.

Following the strong third quarter results, Red Hat revised its revenue guidance for the year. Revenue is now projected to be $1.531 billion to $1.534 billion, up from earlier guidance of $1.51 billion to $1.52 billion.

[RED HAT ARCHIVE: Check out more than a decade of Red Hat stories as reported in WRALTechWire.]