Global Equities Research Anticipating Additional Red Hat Acquisitions

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) could be on the verge of as many as two acquisitions in the Unstructured Storage infrastructure space.

That's according to Global Equities Research, which sent out a quick e-mail update on the stock late last night.

“New Project starts on Red Hat continues to remain strong; Continues to gain market share against Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT),” said Trip Chowdhry, Global Equities' Managing Director of Equity Research. “RHEL 6.0 continues to take market share away from SUSE Linux and Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) Solaris.”

“Red Hat, by acquiring Gluster, may have [leapfrogged] Hadoop, and may capture 20% - 25% of $4 Billion Unstructured Storage market opportunity within next 2 – 3 years,” Chowdhry added. “We are anticipating Red Hat to probably make another 1 or 2 possible acquisitions in the Unstructured Storage infrastructure space, maybe over the next 1 or 2 quarters. This may cause near-term margin pressure; but possible revenue acceleration and margin expansion 8-12 months from now.”

Over the past three months, Red Hat has watched its stock rise rather steadily, going from $36.95 on September 6 its year-to-date high of $52.72 on November 15. On Friday, Red Hat closed at $50.22.

Global Equities Research is maintaining its estimates, OW rating and $50 PT.

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