Prodways Group’s Acquisitions Pay Off

Prodways Group announced stellar financial results.

The France-based company manufactures a series of industrial-scale 3D printers that can produce large-sized polymer and ceramic objects. The company announced their quarterly financial results showing their products revenue (from 3D printed services) rose a massive 40.3%, while their systems revenue (from 3D printers and associated materials & services) rose an astonishing 146.4%!

That is a very significant rise, particularly at the monetary levels we’re talking about here: tens of millions of euros. It’s a lot easier for a smaller company to grow at such a rate, for example going from US$500K to US$1.5M, than for a larger operation like Prodways Group to achieve the same percentage gain.

How did they do this?

The answer is simple: acquisitions.

In the past year the company has made two significant additions to their group. One was Avenao in late 2017. This company uses 3D printing to produce parts on demand for customers. Obviously, they use Prodways equipment to do so, but they also use metal 3D printers to produce production metal components.

Prodways Group also acquired Solidscape from Stratasys in mid-2018 in a surprise move from both companies. This was an unexpected move, as Stratasys had themselves acquired Solidscape not too much earlier. Later, it turned out a possible answer had to do with the pending expiry of certain technology patents.

That reasoning focused on Stratasys’ motives in disposing of Solidscape. Now we know Prodways Group’s benefits: their incredible financial results were largely as a result of these two acquisitions, which boosted their revenues considerably.

There are two primary growth strategies companies may undertake.

One is organic growth, where the company internally innovates to produce new products and services, marketing them to existing and new clients. Growth occurs naturally from additional sales from these moves.

The other strategy is to grow by acquisition. Rather than developing a new technology, process or market, a company simply buys it from another company – and sometimes scooping up the entire other company in the process. You will hear acquisitions to acquire patents, customer lists, expertise, market share and others.

In this case it’s now clear how Prodways Group hopes to grow: by acquisition. It is likely they will continue to acquire other 3D print-related operations in the future. Who they will be, we do not know.

But we do know that their name, Prodways “Group”, is very appropriate.

Via Prodways Group