Esperion Therapeutics once traded above $115. It was languishing under $2 when ARCHIMED swooped in with a $1.1 billion take-private deal. The cholesterol drug everybody forgot about might be the smartest private equity bet of the year.
A Cholesterol Drug Nobody Wanted
Imagine buying a house that the whole neighborhood thinks is a teardown. The roof leaks, the paint is peeling, and everyone's been watching it deteriorate for years. Then a contractor shows up, writes a check, and tells you he sees a mansion underneath.
That's basically what just happened with Esperion Therapeutics.
ARCHIMED, a healthcare-focused private equity firm, announced it's taking Esperion private in an all-cash deal valued at roughly $1.1 billion. The offer: $3.16 per share. Shareholders also get a shot at up to $100 million in additional milestone payments tied to future sales. If the deal closes as expected in Q3 2026, Esperion will disappear from the Nasdaq for good.
For a stock that once traded above $115, getting bought out at $3.16 feels like the biotech equivalent of selling your Ferrari at a yard sale. But for shareholders who rode this thing down to under $2? That premium looks a lot more attractive.
From $115 to $2: A Long Fall
Esperion's decline has been one of biotech's most painful slow-motion crashes. The company hit its all-time high back in May 2015, when investors were giddy about its cholesterol-lowering drug, bempedoic acid. The science was promising. The market opportunity was enormous. The stock reflected all of that optimism.
Then reality showed up.
Commercializing a cholesterol drug in a world dominated by cheap generic statins turned out to be brutally hard. Esperion's products, NEXLETOL and NEXLIZET (bempedoic acid, sold alone or combined with ezetimibe), carved out a niche for patients who can't tolerate statins. But convincing doctors, insurers, and patients to try something new and expensive took years longer than anyone expected.
The stock fell 52% in 2023 alone, closing the year around $3. It dropped another 26% in 2024, bottoming out near $1.61 at one point. By early 2025, shares hit new lows. Wall Street had largely moved on.
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While the stock was collapsing, something interesting was happening with the actual business. Bempedoic acid was quietly building one of the strongest clinical resumes in cardiology.
The CLEAR Outcomes trial, which enrolled nearly 14,000 patients, proved that bempedoic acid doesn't just lower cholesterol; it reduces heart attacks and other major cardiovascular events by 13% compared to placebo. In primary prevention patients (those who hadn't yet had a heart attack but were at high risk), the reduction was even more striking: roughly 30%.
And here's the kicker that cardiologists love: when you normalize for the amount of LDL cholesterol reduction, bempedoic acid sits right on the same curve as statins. Per unit of cholesterol lowered, it delivers comparable cardiovascular protection. It just doesn't lower cholesterol as aggressively as high-intensity statins do, which is why it's positioned as an alternative for the millions of patients who can't take statins due to side effects.
That clinical validation started translating to commercial traction. U.S. net product revenue hit $115.7 million in 2024, up 48% from the prior year. The prescriber base grew past 30,000 doctors. Coverage expanded to over 90% of commercial lives and 80% of Medicare lives.
The revenue line was accelerating. The stock just refused to cooperate.
Why Private Equity Pounced
This is the kind of disconnect that makes private equity investors salivate. A scientifically validated drug with growing revenues, expanding market access, and a massive addressable population of statin-intolerant patients, all wrapped in a stock trading at roughly 2x price-to-sales.
ARCHIMED specializes in exactly this type of situation. The firm focuses exclusively on healthcare, investing across pharma, medtech, diagnostics, and life sciences. It looks for profitable (or nearly profitable) companies that can scale through international expansion, bolt-on acquisitions, and operational improvements. Esperion checks every box.
Taking the company private removes the quarterly earnings treadmill that has plagued Esperion for years. No more worrying about whether the stock moves on a revenue beat or miss. No more short sellers. No more explaining to public market investors why a drug that reduces heart attacks still isn't profitable enough.
Instead, ARCHIMED can focus on what Esperion's management has been building: a global cardiometabolic platform. European sales through partner Daiichi Sankyo are growing, with royalties hitting $9.7 million in Q4 2024 alone. A new deal with CSL Seqirus opens up Australia and New Zealand. Total revenue for 2025 is guided at $400 to $408 million, which represents over 55% growth when you strip out one-time milestone payments from 2024.
The Bigger Picture
This deal isn't just about one company. It signals something broader about where smart money is flowing in healthcare.
Cardiometabolic disease (heart disease, diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol) affects hundreds of millions of people globally. These are chronic conditions requiring long-term treatment, which means recurring revenue streams that private equity loves. Unlike early-stage biotech, where your entire investment thesis can blow up on a single clinical trial readout, a marketed drug with proven outcomes data and growing prescriptions is more like a toll booth on a busy highway.
ARCHIMED's bet is straightforward: Esperion's bempedoic acid franchise is worth significantly more than the public market was willing to pay. The firm just needs time, operational focus, and freedom from Wall Street's short attention span to unlock that value.
What Shareholders Get (and Don't Get)
For current ESPR holders, the math is simple but bittersweet. The $3.16 cash offer is real money, and it's a meaningful premium to where shares were trading before the announcement. The stock quickly moved to about $3.10 to $3.15 after the news, leaving almost no arbitrage spread. That tells you the market believes the deal will close.
The contingent milestone rights add a lottery ticket element. If Esperion's sales hit certain thresholds after the deal closes, shareholders could receive additional payments from that $100 million pool. But these rights won't be tradeable, so you're locked in until milestones either hit or expire.
Jefferies reportedly cut its rating to Hold and trimmed its price target to $3.28, acknowledging the obvious: when a buyout caps your upside, there's not much left to do but wait for closing.
The Bottom Line
Esperion's story is a reminder that in biotech, the market's opinion and a drug's value can diverge wildly. A stock can lose 97% of its value while the underlying product gains landmark clinical evidence, doubles its revenue, and expands across the globe.
ARCHIMED looked at that gap and wrote a billion-dollar check. Whether they overpaid or got the deal of the decade depends on how the next few years play out. But one thing is clear: someone just bought the "teardown" house, and they're betting it's a mansion.
Deals & M&A5 min read
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