PreMarket Prep Stock Of The Day: Editas Medicine

Benzinga's PreMarket Prep airs every morning from 8-9 a.m. ET. During that fast-paced, highly informative hour, traders and investors tune in to get the major news of the day, the catalysts behind those moves and the corresponding price action for the upcoming session.

On any given day, the show will cover at least 20 stocks determined by co-hosts Joel Elconin and Dennis Dick along with producer Spencer Israel.

While the S&P 500 index is about 4% under its all-time high, that's not the case for all stocks. In fact, many are well off their highs and still falling. One of those issues is Editas Medicine Inc. EDIT, which is the PreMarket Prep Stock Of The Day.

The Company: Editas Medicine is a gene-editing company. It's engaged in treating patients with genetically defined diseases by correcting disease-causing genes. The company focuses on developing a proprietary genome editing platform based on clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/ CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9 technology).

What A Year: After ending 2020 at $70.11, the issue blasted to $99.45 in January and retreated to end the month at $61.35. The issue was under continued selling pressure and didn't bottom until May at $29.35.

At the start of September, the issue had rallied back to the area it ended last year ($70.11). Sellers began to reemerge and nudged it lower, but it was still able to close at $62.07 on Sept. 23.

Tepid Initiation Of Coverage: Before the open on Sept. 24, Stifel initiated coverage on the stock with a Hold rating and a price target of $65. For the second quarter, Editas Medicine had an EPS of $0.81, compared to the year-ago quarter EPS of $0.43.

The coverage by Stifel didn't settle well with investors as the issue declined from $62.07 to $58.71 in the following session and the selling was just getting started.

Bad Day In The Market, Bad Reaction To Data: The issue took a tumble in Tuesday’s session along with the broad market, but to a much bigger degree, falling from $57.84 to $52.45.

Before the open on Wednesday, the company announced initial clinical data from the ongoing, open-label Phase 1/2 BRILLIANCE clinical trial of EDIT-101. EDIT-101 is under development for the treatment of blindness due to Leber congenital amaurosis 10 (LCA10), a CEP290-related retinal degenerative disorder.

Apparently, the data wasn't was the Street was looking for the long term.

Here's Why Editas Stock Dropped After Data From CRISPR-Based Retinal Disorder Candidate

Reversal In Price Action: The initial response to the data was positive as the issue spiked to $54.22 in premarket trading, but then began to fade fast and hard. After a much lower open ($49.18 vs. $52.45), it had a brief rally to $50.20 and resumed its move lower.

It has continued to make new lows for the session, with current standing at $41.43 as of 12:30 p.m. ET, and is now attempting to remain in the $43 handle. That low coincides with its Aug. 4 low of $41.25.