Fouremm wrote "Looking at a company like Esperion with a market cap now of about $2.1B USD despite the fact that, IMO, they have far less of a potential market opportunity compared to RVX leaves me very frustrated to say the least. Yes Esperion has had a smoother trial ride but the breadth of their program is far narrower than RVX’s and the market opportunity for their primary program is much smaller."

Esperion has 5 Phase 3 trials reading out in the next 10 months. Two of them read out in March. LDL-cholesterol lowering is still a huge goal and a huge market can't get their in a cost-effective manner (i.e. resistance to covering PCSK9 drugs, intolerance to statins). Bempedoic acid offers stand alone LDL-C lowering for those that are stain intolerant, or in combo with a tolerable level of statins. Furthermore, they have a bempedoic acid + ezetimibe combo in Phase 3, and ezetimibe is coming off patent soon. This allows bempedoic acid to be in a combo therapy with ezetimibe, or in a triplet therapy with statin and ezetimibe. Plus, they have a Phase 2 in combo with PCSK9 drugs reading out this quarter too. Additionally, bempedoic acid lowers hsCRP. So you have a cheap, orally available drug that can provide additional LDL-C lowering and anti-inflammatory, combined with recent clinical trials validating that lowering LDL-C and inflammation independently lower cardiovascular risk. They'll be able to market for LDL-C lowering (NDA and MMA applications H1 2019) while their cardiovascular outcomes trial finishes up in 2022. Sounds like a huge market opportunity to me! 

Fouremm wrote "The biggest difference to me is Esperion has far more qualified management with real biotech track records of accomplishment who give the market a clear picture of what they are aiming for, how they are planning to get there and where the money is coming from. As a result the Esperion program has not been in doubt financially and they have been able to move forward with relatively little dilution as compared to RVX and, in the last few years, with much superior share price/market cap performance as compared to RVX."

I agree 100%

SanFran wrote "But doesn’t Esperion have a large number of shareholder class action suits against them?   I heard that they do and seemed to have confirmed this with a quick Web search.      The implication being that perhaps they have over-sold the company to investors?"

Yeah, I think there were some misleading statement a while back from ESPR regarding the FDA endorsing a plan for marketing approval of bempedoic acid for LDL-lowering indication. At the time, the FDA was waffling on whether future LDL-C lowering drugs could be marketed for LDL-C lowering alone and there was worry that FDA would require cardiovascular outcomes data prior to approval. However, the PCSK9 FOURIER trial pretty much re-validated the LDL-C hypothesis that the lower one goes with LDL-C the better for cardiovascular outcomes. So now, Esperion has a clear path from both FDA and EMA for being able to market for LDL-C lowering alone. So all of that class action lawsuit stuff is irrelevant in my opinion (since I was always long on ESPR anyway). But perhaps there are some shareholders still seeking legal action? Regardless, that is not going to stop the bempedoic acid train. Choo choo.