Friday’s release of 3D Systems quarterly financial results have put a huge dent in the company’s stock price.
This week the price is down from ~USD$12.50 to around ~USD$9.50, a drop of almost one quarter of the value. It’s even more significant when you look back to see that this same stock was worth USD$14.20 on October 3rd. That’s a drop of 33% in about a month. At that rate, the company would disappear by year’s end.
But of course, that’s not going to happen. The reason for the drop were explained in our previous post, where 3D Systems missed their earnings expectations and in fact declined to provide estimates for future periods. It seems they are undergoing a significant internal change and they cannot – or won’t – say how long it will take or what effects might occur. At least at this time.
This situation seems to have put a bit of a dark cloud on other 3D printing stocks as well. I notice that Stratasys has also taken a dip, but to far less a degree.
It is interesting to note that investors sometimes extrapolate the issues of one company onto others, perhaps believing that there is a problem selling equipment to the market, rather than focusing on the specific companies involved. But that’s the vagaries of publicly traded stock.
One very interesting implication of these stock wiggles is that there is a new leader in the 3D printing industry, at least if you measure by market capitalization. That’s the total value of all the company’s stocks added together (the number of shares times the current individual stock price). For some time the largest value dedicated 3D printer company has been 3D Systems, but after this week’s change we can see that Stratasys’ market “cap” is now USD$1.19B, whereas 3D Systems is now “only” USD$1.07B. Both are still huge, but now Stratasys is the largest.
At least until the stock prices change yet again, which they will.
Meanwhile, 3D Systems investors had probably best wait to see what magic the company’s reorganization may produce in future months.
Via Google Finance
