It’s been a bad month for most 3D printing stocks, in spite of the recent hype.
We checked out the recent results for multiple 3D printer manufacturers as prompted by a post in Wall Street Sector Selector entitled, “Most 3D Printing Stocks Fall on Monday”.
In fact, the results have been bad, or in some cases flat, which might be a generous description. ExOne’s stock price dropped over a third. Organovo, a smaller bioprinting startup, suffered a drop of over 18%.
VoxelJet dropped around 16%, an amount very similar to industry giant 3D Systems’ result. Perhaps this isn’t surprising as 3D Systems has been reselling VoxelJet equipment, indicating an affinity between the two companies.
The winner, if you could call it that, would be Stratasys, which somehow came through stormy September with a stock price decrease of only two and a half percent.
Again, we’re not surprised by this turn of events. The hype of 3D printing gets less shiny when researchers and investors look more deeply into the true capabilities of the technology. They’ll discover the machines don’t actually do all the things they hoped. Nope, it’s not Star Trek.
But hang in there. 3D printing is an amazing technology and it will continue to improve and build capabilities far beyond today’s levels. Investing in publicly traded 3D printing companies today is not a get-rich-quick maneuver; it’s transformed into a long term play.
