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 may be recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Tiffany Aldrich, Associate Director, Corporate Communications at Asperion. Please go ahead, Tiffany.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Experion's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. 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, presentation, and our 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 9, 2023. 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 morning detailing the contents of today's call. A copy can be found at experian.com within the Investors and Media section. With us today are Sheldon Koenig, President and CEO, Ben Halliday, Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Joanne Foody, Chief Medical Officer, Eric Warren, Chief Commercial Officer, and D.J. Swartz, Chief Strategy Officer. 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. I'll now turn the call over to Sheldon for some prepared remarks. Sheldon?

Thank you, Tiffany, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to review our first quarter results and significant recent achievements. We reported revenue of $24.3 million, or growth of 29% year over year. Retail prescription equivalents grew by 15% year over year, and new-to-brand prescriptions grew by 56% compared to the prior quarter. It's clear that we are off to a very strong start in 2023. Let me now share some of the highlights from the quarter that are driving this positive momentum. As you know, we recently presented impressive clinically meaningful cardiovascular risk reduction results from our landmark clear outcomes trial at ACC in March, as well as published these broadly disseminated data in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. This was a major accomplishment for Aspirion that was years in the making, and we're very proud of the team for their tireless work in achieving this milestone. I'll further discuss these positive results in a moment. Our entire organization is continuing to work expeditiously following our data announcement, and we remain on track for regulatory submissions to both the U.S. FDA and the European Medicines Agency in the first half of this year. Once we file, there's typically a 10-month review period, so our expectation is for the label change to become effective in the first half of 2024. As a reminder, our sales reps are prohibited from mentioning anything beyond the current label, so we expect the label change to have a significant and positive impact on demand for our drugs. New-to-brand prescriptions spiked 88% in the four weeks following our ACC data presentation, and Eric will provide more color from the field to explain why we are seeing this trend so quickly and ahead of our initial expectations. We are also making swift progress in Europe. The International Lipid Expert Panel has updated the guidelines and now recommends benpitoic acid ahead of PCSK9 inhibitors, either alone or in combination with the Zetamide. Next, our European partner has demonstrated persistent growth for the Nexlital and Nexlizet franchise in that geography. Our European commercialization of benpitoic acid continues to expand, and we are proud to report that reimbursement of the drug was recently approved in Italy, and that marketing approval was obtained in Turkey. Next, we have launched a new scientific website targeting the scientific and medical communities to further educate these important stakeholders about the benefits of NexLatal and NexLivet. Lastly, we recently announced a commercial partnership with Curex Pharmaceuticals. This partnership will enable their 72 reps to promote NexLatal and NexLivet with primary care providers, effectively doubling our promotional footprint. We expect their reps to be fully trained and in the field by July. Let me now walk you through some key business accomplishments. As you all know, ClearOut comes with a landmark trial unprecedented in its scope, which assessed the ability of benpidoic acid to improve outcomes in individuals unable to maximize or tolerate a statin. We focused on a significant underserved population unable to achieve their LDL cholesterol goals with current therapy. It was conducted in nearly 14,000 patients in 32 countries, inclusive of approximately 50% women, which is an important and differentiating component compared to other cardiovascular trials, and which generated a round of applause from the physician audience at ACC, as cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women. I want to take a moment to reiterate the high-level findings from the CLEAR trial because they are so important. A cardiovascular risk reduction of more than 20%, including a reduction in non-fatal heart attacks, this is a significant outcome, not only for Aspirin, but more importantly for patients. Our drugs are literally saving lives. We will present additional analysis from this trial at multiple medical meetings throughout the year, which we expect will further raise awareness amongst prescribers. We saw significant coverage and excitement about benpozoic acids following the announcement of clear outcomes results, not only from the medical community, but also from the media and the general public. This data has been so impactful that it has been covered in over 500 print, trade, and broadcast media pieces garnering over 1 billion total impressions, which is equivalent to us getting approximately $200 million in paid advertising. We're thrilled to see so much enthusiasm for our study and are proud to be at the forefront of the discussion about reaching cholesterol goals. We aim to continue the conversation while increasing awareness about the importance of lowering LDL cholesterol. With that, I'll now turn it over to Eric Warren, our Chief Commercial Officer, for a commercial perspective.