Global Equities Research Anticipating Additional Red Hat Acquisitions

Red Hat

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

,” said Trip Chowdhry, Global Equities' Managing Director of Equity Research. “RHEL 6.0 continues to take market share away from SUSE Linux and Oracle

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.