Esperion Therapeutics, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference call may be recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ben Church, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at Experian. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to Asperion's first quarter 2021 financial results and company update conference call. I'm Ben Church, and I'm responsible for investor relations and corporate communications here at Asperion. With me on today's call are Tim Mayleben, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sheldon Koenig, Chief Operating Officer, and Rick Bartram, Chief Financial Officer. I want to remind callers that the information discussed on the call today is covered under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. I caution listeners that management will be making forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by our forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with the business. These forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements contained in today's press release and SEC filings. The content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of this live broadcast, May 4, 2021. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call and webcast. As a reminder, this conference call and webcast are being recorded and archived. We issued a press release this afternoon detailing the content of today's call. A copy can be found at www.esperian.com within the Investors and Media section. We will begin with prepared comments and then open the call for your questions. Following today's call, the team will be available for follow-up questions. please email investorrelations at Asperian.com to schedule 20 minutes to speak with the team. I'd now like to turn the call over to our President and CEO, Tim Mayleben. Tim?

Thank you, Ben. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we review the progress made across our global business during the first quarter. I'll start today's call with a brief overview of progress, touching on the highlights from the quarter. Sheldon will review our recent US commercial initiatives in greater detail. And finally, Rick will provide additional color on our financial performance. For this stage of our US launch, our priority is to ensure that as many patients as possible have a positive experience with our medicines. From the start, we have purposely positioned our medicines to minimize barriers around price and access to enable that experience. We have been unwavering in this commitment to patients, following our mission of lipid management for everyone. We entered the year with new commercial leadership who quickly identified and implemented a refined strategy to position our medicines for both near-term and longer-term success. Today, we will highlight the great things happening across the business, but we'll also provide you insights into the US net revenue results for the quarter. As you saw in our press release, our commercial team continued to drive strong prescription demand growth for Nexplatel and Nexlazet in the U.S. during the first quarter. In fact, almost 50 percent demand growth. But net U.S. revenue was negatively impacted by first quarter net pricing. Rick will provide more detail on the factors influencing this result and their impact on this quarter's U.S. net revenue. He and Sheldon will also provide you insights into the moderating impact of these factors on future quarters. We continue to be optimistic that there is an easing commercial environment as we see statin new-to-brand prescriptions recovering and patients taking their first steps to reprioritize cardiovascular health by returning to their physician's offices. This reprioritization, combined with our newly implemented refined commercial strategy, provides us increasing confidence for a shift in demand growth in the second half of the year. I want to turn now to a couple of announcements we recently made to advance our global strategic priorities to expand the reach of our medicines through strong and experienced ex-US partners while simultaneously strengthening our balance sheet. Last week, we announced an expanded partnership with Daiichi Sankyo granting Daiichi exclusive rights to commercialize our medicines in select territories across the ASCA region, which includes countries across Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. The agreement builds upon an already highly productive relationship and reinforces both companies' commitment to bringing novel cardiovascular medicines to patients globally. The $30 million upfront tied to the expansion of the Daiichi relationship came simultaneously with the announcement of Aspirion securing the remaining $50 million from Oberlin Capital under our existing revenue-based funding agreement. As a result, our pro forma cash at the end of the first quarter is around $300 million. Turning now to Europe, the depth of Daiichi's global cardiovascular expertise is evidenced by the success of their ongoing launch of our medicines in Germany which will be followed in other European countries later this year and into next year. The number of patients treated with our medicines in Germany during the first quarter increased significantly, already reaching near 14,000 patients by the end of the first quarter. Great progress continues in Japan as well. I'm pleased to report that Otsuka, which owns rights to the Bepidoic acid franchise in Japan, continues to advance the clinical development of our medicines. Otsuka initiated Phase II development in April, enrolling their first patient in a clinical study. More to come on this in future quarters. Finally, I want to highlight that Aspirion still retains full rights to China, among many other ex-U.S. territories, and of course, 100% commercial rights in the U.S., Now that the expanded partnership with Daiichi is in place, recall that we've already recognized approximately $400 million from our ex-U.S. partnerships. We'll be exploring all avenues to accelerate the speed and reach of our medicines to patients, physicians, and payers in the U.S. Importantly, we will do this in ways that are in the best interests of our long-term shareholders. I'd like to end with this. Aspirion, like most companies launching new medicines in the U.S. during the pandemic, has experienced both expected and unexpected commercial challenges since FDA approval of our medicines in the U.S. last February. More broadly, Aspirion has also experienced a number of important successes during this time, both in the U.S. and abroad. In our industry, there has been too little focus on the plight of people suffering from cardiovascular disease, still the number one killer worldwide. And as the lipid management company, we will continue pursuing our mission to provide these people with convenient oral LDL cholesterol lowering medicines. I am confident that our new commercial team is advancing Aspirin in the right direction here in the U.S., As a team, we're absolutely committed to taking the necessary steps to elevate the U.S. commercialization of NextLatal and NextLisette, and as I said a few moments ago, to do so in ways that are in the best interest of our long-term shareholders. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Sheldon. Sheldon?