Fate Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:FATE) shareholders will have a reason to smile today, with the analysts making substantial upgrades to this year's statutory forecasts. The analysts have sharply increased their revenue numbers, with a view that Fate Therapeutics will make substantially more sales than they'd previously expected.

After the upgrade, the consensus from Fate Therapeutics' 15 analysts is for revenues of US$11m in 2024, which would reflect a noticeable 7.3% decline in sales compared to the last year of performance. Per-share losses are expected to creep up to US$1.64. Yet prior to the latest estimates, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$5.8m and losses of US$1.81 per share in 2024. So there's been quite a change-up of views after the recent consensus updates, with the analysts making a sizeable increase to their revenue forecasts while also reducing the estimated loss as the business grows towards breakeven.

Despite these upgrades, the analysts have not made any major changes to their price target of US$6.68, implying that their latest estimates don't have a long term impact on what they think the stock is worth.

These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the Fate Therapeutics' past performance and to peers in the same industry. These estimates imply that sales are expected to slow, with a forecast annualised revenue decline of 14% by the end of 2024. This indicates a significant reduction from annual growth of 29% over the last five years. Compare this with our data, which suggests that other companies in the same industry are, in aggregate, expected to see their revenue grow 23% per year. So although its revenues are forecast to shrink, this cloud does not come with a silver lining - Fate Therapeutics is expected to lag the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The most important thing here is that analysts reduced their loss per share estimates for this year, reflecting increased optimism around Fate Therapeutics' prospects. Pleasantly, analysts also upgraded their revenue estimates, and their forecasts suggest the business is expected to grow slower than the wider market. Seeing the dramatic upgrade to this year's forecasts, it might be time to take another look at Fate Therapeutics.

These earnings upgrades look like a sterling endorsement, but before diving in - you should know that we've spotted 4 potential concerns with Fate Therapeutics, including dilutive stock issuance over the past year. For more information, you can click through to our platform to learn more about this and the 3 other concerns we've identified .

Another way to search for interesting companies that could be reaching an inflection point is to track whether management are buying or selling, with our free list of growing companies backed by insiders.

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