Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Raymond backed an Overweight rating on Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN) shares following this morning's release of fasinumab results, saying the drug and partner Teva's (TEVA) anti-NGF antibody met its primary and secondary efficacy pain and functional endpoints in a Phase 3 trial of patients with chronic pain from osteoarthritis of the knee or hip. Raymond says the efficacy "was never really in doubt," but the bigger focus for the drug is safety, and will wait for detailed data at an upcoming medical meeting, but notes that fasinumab's arthropathy rate appears "slightly higher" than that of tanezumab. Given the severity of the ongoing opioid epidemic and relative lack of alternatives for these patients outside of total joint replacement, the analyst thinks the appetite of regulators and potential market for new effective, non-opioid chronic pain therapies like anti-NGF clearly exists, though he will leave this as an unmodeled potential source of upside for now,