Why Is Esperion Therapeutics (ESPR) Stock Down 60% Today?

Esperion Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ESPR) stock is taking a beating on Thursday as the company comes into conflict with Daiichi Sankyo Europe.

The problem between these two companies has to do with milestone payments. Esperion Therapeutics believes it is due $300 million in milestone payments from the results of its CLEAR Outcomes clinical trial. Daiichi Sankyo Europe disagrees with this claim.

The conflict comes from the clinical trial results’ primary endpoint of a 12.98% reduction in MACE-4. This is below the 20% included in the license agreement. However, that agreement has a section covering cardiovascular risk reduction. When taking that into account, there’s a 23% reduction of fatal and non-fatal myocardial infarction.

Esperion Therapeutics says that it intends to “enforce its contractual rights and seek the milestone payments it believes it is entitled to.” Even so, it warns there could be delays in getting the money even if it’s successful in enforcing those rights.

What This Means For ESPR Stock

Esperion Therapeutics having to fight for milestone payments isn’t filling investors with confidence today. The company could run into troubles that keep it from getting the funds, which would be a further blow to ESPR stock.

This has ESPR stock experiencing strong trading during pre-market hours on Thursday. As of this writing, more than 1.6 million shares have changed hands. That’s closing in on its daily average trading volume of about 2.2 million shares.

ESPR stock is down 59.8% as of Thursday morning.

There’s more stock market news worth diving into below!

InvestorPlace is home to all of the hottest stock market news traders need to know about on Thursday. A few examples include why shares of CXApp (NASDAQ:CXAI) and ThermoGenesis (NASDAQ:THMO) stock are up, and the biggest pre-market stock movers this morning. We’ve got all that news read to go with the following links!

More Thursday Stock Market News

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• Why Is ThermoGenesis (THMO) Stock Up 54% Today?
• Today’s Biggest Pre-Market Stock Movers: 10 Top Gainers and Losers on Thursday

On the date of publication, William White did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

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