Idenix Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: IDIX) was covered this morning in our analyst upgrades and downgrades daily summary, but call is worth a closer look. Deutsche Bank initiated the small biotech with a BUy rating. What was more impressive is the $7.00 price target objective because that indicated about 55% upside from the $4.52 closing price on Tuesday.

What makes this call so interesting is that the company just announced earlier this week that its management will present in a fireside chat at the 2012 Deutsche Bank Access BioFEST Conference on December 3, 2012 in Boston. With a focus on hepatitis B and C it seems as though investors are hoping that the company’s pipeline in Phase II studies will have significant upside since Idenix has estimated that more than 170 million people worldwide are chronically infected with HCV.

Shares are up a sharp 13% at $5.13 on the news and the volume is already closing in on 1 million shares after only about an hour of trading. Idenix has a $685 million market cap and shares have a 52-week range of $3.35 to $15.25. Another observation is that the consensus analyst target is already about $7.20 here with a range of $4.00 to $15.00 for the stock.

JON C. OGG