Sheldon Koenig
Analyst · H.C. Wainwright
Thank you, Tiffany. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. 2025 was a defining and transformative year for our company, representing our strongest performance to date. We fortified our financial foundation, continued our strong commercial execution and reinforced our commitment to the patients who inspire everything we do. Because of this work, we entered 2026 with strong momentum and a clear path forward. We recently introduced our Vision 2040, which defines our long-term ambition and the road map to achieve it. I'm proud to say we are already executing on that vision. Our planned acquisition of Corstasis Therapeutics significantly enhances our company and demonstrates our Vision 2040 strategy in action. It is a transformational step that will give us 2 powerful global franchises to grow, our global bempedoic acid portfolio and Enbumyst, a first-in-class intranasal diuretic addressing meaningful needs in heart failure care. This combination of addressing bad cholesterol and heart failure will align with our existing cardiology footprint, accelerate growth and most importantly, offer patients more impactful, patient-friendly options across the continuum of cardiometabolic disease. The acquisition of Corstasis is a catalyst for additional long-term value and a testament to our commitment to building a larger and sustainably profitable company. Our priority is to grow these 2 franchises to their multibillion-dollar potential. Turning to the progress we've made building the U.S. bempedoic acid franchise, we achieved strong prescription growth and broadened payer coverage as we focused our sales and marketing efforts on statin-intolerant patients, which represents a significant market opportunity. Together, this allowed us to drive Q4 year-over-year sales by 38%, increase retail prescription equivalents by 34% and expand the number of unique health care practitioners prescribing NEXLETOL and NEXLIZET by nearly 25%. We anticipate 2026 to continue this momentum, driven by our strong reimbursement and expect favorable positioning in the U.S. dyslipidemia guidelines, which should be released imminently. In addition, the American College of Cardiology scientific statement on inflammation and cardiovascular disease formally recognized the link between inflammation measured by hsCRP and ASCVD. The authors provided call to action to implement broad screening of hsCRP for primary and secondary prevention patients in combination with LDL-cholesterol screening. Importantly, the American Heart Association corroborated this recognition in its hsCRP toolkit for professionals in which bempedoic acid is recognized as an agent to reduce hsCRP. I will remind everyone that NEXLETOL and NEXLIZET are the only non-statins proven to reduce hsCRP by up to 46%. Looking ahead, we are advancing our 2 triple combination programs and expect to complete the clinical and regulatory requirements to commercialize in 2027. Based on published data, triple combination therapies have demonstrated the potential to reduce LDL-cholesterol up to 70%, a level of efficacy that could rival current injectables and emerging oral treatments. Now turning to our continued international expansion. Our global partners delivered yet another year of substantial growth. Daiichi Sankyo Europe increased fourth quarter royalty revenue by 51% compared with fourth quarter 2024. They expanded access to 30 countries, including receiving favorable payer reimbursement and launching in France and have treated more than 700,000 patients to date. During the fourth quarter, our Japanese partner, Otsuka, successfully launched NEXLETOL in Japan following regulatory approval and a highly favorable national health insurance price listing. Early market reception has exceeded even the most optimistic expectations, with Japan representing the world's third largest market for cardiovascular disease prevention. And given the strong pricing environment, we believe this momentum positions us for significant and sustained growth in 2026 and beyond. Additional launches and regulatory progress continue across Canada, Israel, Australia and New Zealand. Moving on to our pipeline progress. We continue to advance a new generation of highly specifically ACLY inhibitors, targeting serious metabolic and inflammatory diseases. We nominated ESP-2001 as our next development candidate for the treatment of primary sclerosing cholangitis, or PSC, a devastating disease with no approved therapies. ESP-2001 is now advancing through IND-enabling studies, and we plan to be in the clinic by the end of this year. Collectively, our progress across commercial execution, pipeline advancement and global expansion reinforces the strength of the strategy we have put in place and sets us up for a powerful next phase of growth. Now let me turn to a review of our exciting agreement to acquire Corstasis Therapeutics. This transaction will provide us with global rights to its FDA-approved therapy, Enbumyst, a first-in-class intranasal diuretic approved in September 2025 for the treatment of edema associated with congestive heart failure, hepatic disease and renal disease. This acquisition is a highly strategic and transformational step for Esperion. It will expand our presence beyond chronic lipid management into a large complementary cardiometabolic market and meaningfully accelerate our growth trajectory. In addition, Corstasis is advancing a subcutaneous pipeline, including a multi-dose pen injector, which has the potential to unlock additional market opportunities. Enbumyst is available now to address a significant unmet need and aligns directly with our U.S. cardiology-focused commercial infrastructure, enabling immediate cross-selling synergies with the physicians already prescribing NEXLETOL and NEXLIZET. Enbumyst was developed in partnership with cardiologists specializing in heart failure, who recognized the fact that 1 in 4 patients are readmitted to a hospital within 30 days, driving significant health care costs, despite current products in the market attempting to address this. To reduce readmission rates and provide an easy-to-use at-home treatment, these cardiologists developed Enbumyst, a differentiated patient-friendly alternative to oral and injectable diuretics. As the only nasal spray loop diuretic, it bypasses GI absorption issues, offers rapid onset and supports at-home management of fluid overload. This creates a compelling opportunity to reduce hospital admissions and readmissions, an area of profound unmet need in heart failure, where nearly 2/3 of the 1 million hospitalizations each year are primarily for diuresis, many of which may be avoidable. Financially, this acquisition provides Esperion with a highly attractive entry point into a $4-plus billion U.S. outpatient market -- heart failure market and significant runway for utilization growth. Moving forward, our plan is to fully leverage our commercial team's cardiovascular sales presence to scale adoption and accelerate revenue contribution. We are also planning our strategy to launch Enbumyst in ex U.S. markets as we have global rights. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. Enbumyst strengthens our foundation, expands our commercial reach and uniquely positions us to attack the growing global cardiometabolic disease epidemic now and into the future. With that, let me turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Ben Halladay, for a review of our financials.