Amedisys Shares Popped: What You Need to Know

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of home-health-care specialist Amedisys (Nasdaq: AMED  ) surged as much as 14% in early trading today after a Deutsche Bank analyst upgraded from "hold" to "buy."

So what: Citing an attractive risk/reward trade-off, Deutsche Bank offered a tasty price target of $39, which is about 30% higher than Amedisys' closing price Monday. With Amedisys trading at a sub-five forward EV/EBITDA, Deutsche Bank believes investors' downside is well-protected, while continued progress in restructuring gives them plenty of potential upside, to boot.

Now what: It's hard not to be at least a little intrigued with that outperform case. Even factoring in today's surge, Amedisys is down about 40% in 2010 and still has roughly 20% of upside left to Deutsche Bank's price target. With Amedisys continuing to trade at a substantial P/E discount to rivals Almost Family (Nasdaq: AFAM  ) and Gentiva Health (Nasdaq: GTIV  ) , the stock looks like a relatively healthy bet, as well.

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