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 Tiffany Albridge, Associate Director of Corporate Communications at Experian. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and welcome to Experian's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. With us today are Sheldon Koenig, President and CEO, and Ben Halliday, CFO. Other members of the executive team will be available for Q&A following our prepared remarks. We issued a press release earlier this morning detailing the content of today's call. A copy of that release can be found on the investor page of our website, together with a copy of the presentation that we will also be referencing. 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 in 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 7, 2024. 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 will begin the call with prepared remarks and then open the line for your questions. I'll now turn the call over to Sheldon.

Thank you, Tiffany, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our first quarter results and the meaningful progress we continue to make. We are proud to report that we drove strong growth this quarter to start 2024, positioning us for long-term growth and success. In the first quarter, we delivered total revenue of $137.7 million, which includes the $100 million litigation-related settlement received from DSE in January. I'll note that even excluding this payment, this was the highest revenue generating quarter for ongoing business in our company's history. U.S. net revenue was $24.8 million, which represents a 46% increase year over year, driven by a 43% increase in retail prescription equivalents. On March 22nd, we received FDA approval of broad new labels for Nexlatal and Nexlazet, that reflect new indications for cardiovascular risk reduction and expanded LDL cholesterol lowering in both primary and secondary prevention patients. These new labels make Nexlatal and Nexlazet the only LDL lowering non-statins approved for cardiovascular risk reduction in both primary and secondary prevention patients and can now be taken with or without a statin. With these differentiated profiles, We are confident that these new labels position Nexlatal and Nexlazet as the non-statins of first choice in treating patients with or at risk for cardiovascular disease. These new labels are also significant in their ability to bridge what we call the statin gap, which encompasses the tens of millions of patients at risk for cardiovascular disease who are unable or unwilling to take recommended statin therapy. These approvals expand our potential addressable population to more than 70 million patients in the U.S. alone. The FDA approvals came on the heels of a positive CHMP opinion, and we continue to anticipate a similar and positive decision from the European Commission based on the EMA assessment on our European cardiovascular risk reduction label submissions by the end of the second quarter 2024. And on the topic of XUS progress, I'll note that we have initiated the tech transfer process with our partner, DSE, for the manufacturing and supply of our tablets in Europe, and we expect that process to be complete in the second half of next year. Ahead of the highly anticipated FDA approvals, we were preparing on all fronts to be ready to capitalize on our new labels the moment we have them, and we have hit the ground running. I'm pleased to share that all commercialization initiatives that we've previously mentioned are now in place. We launched our Lipid Lurkers consumer campaign and promotional digital tools. Our field teams have been fully trained and certified on our new indications and resources and participated in an in-person launch meeting last month. We initiated partnerships to bolster our patient services platform to ensure healthcare practitioners can prescribe for appropriate patients while we await payer utilization management criteria changes, which usually take one to two quarters. On that note, I am pleased to share that we recently received confirmation of utilization management updates aligning to our new label from two large payers, one commercial payer with 23 million lives that will reflect the new label June 1st, and two of the largest Medicare payers that represent eight and nine million lives each. immediately updated within a week of the label change. We anticipate additional payers to align with our new labels on an ongoing weekly basis. In summary, we've made significant progress, and while it's still early, we're encouraged by the positive initial momentum we've seen thus far in the first few weeks of the second quarter. With that, I will now hand it over to Ben for a more detailed review of our first quarter financial performance.