Rackspace’s Profit Tops Analyst Estimates as Cloud-Computing Revenue Grows
Rackspace Hosting Inc. (RAX), the biggest competitor to Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) in the market for Web-based data centers, rose 9.5 percent in early trading after sales and profit topped analysts’ estimates.
Rackspace shares climbed to $53.89 at 8:15 a.m. in New York after closing at $49.23 yesterday before it reported results.
The company runs a fleet of data centers, letting customers store their websites and applications on its servers. It competes with the Amazon Web Services business in the public- cloud market, where customers rent computing power along with related services. Rackspace’s revenue in that area jumped 86 percent last quarter to $58.5 million, the San Antonio-based company said yesterday in a statement. Sales in the traditional dedicated server business, where the company manages specific machines for customers, rose 23 percent to $224.8 million…