Fate Therapeutics Inc. FATE, -61.45%, plunged 56.8% in premarket trading, putting it on course for a one-day sell-off to record highs after the biopharmaceutical company announced ending its collaboration with Janssen Biotech Inc. and had announced job cuts. The company said it had rejected Janssen’s proposal to continue the collaboration on “revised terms”. The company added that it will reduce its workforce to approximately 220 employees, which translates to a workforce of 279 as of December 31, 2020, according to the company’s latest annual report. The job cuts came as the company decided to stop developing a number of “natural killer” (NK) cell programs for cancer treatments. Fate said it ended December with $475 million in cash, giving it ample resources through 2025. The company’s news prompted no fewer than seven of the 24 analysts polled by FactSet to downgrade the stock and 12 analysts to lower their price targets. The average target is now $22.40, according to FactSet, up from $59.15 at the end of December. The stock, which is on course to open during regular trading hours at its lowest price since December 2017, is already down 52.6% in the past three months to Thursday, while the iShares Biotechnology ETF IBB +1.00% increased by 7.8%. and the S&P 500 SPX, +2.28% is up 1.7%.
