Once again we take a look at the valuations of the major 3D printing companies over the past week.
Publicly traded companies are required to post their financial reports, as well as appear on stock markets. From there we can calculate the total value of their company by multiplying the current stock price by the number of outstanding shares. This number is the market capitalization, and represents the current valuation of the company.
It’s a great number of compare companies, as the market capitalization can be leveraged to provide more capabilities for the company. Shares could, for example, be used as collateral for a loan. That and similar maneuvers could generate cash with which the company might undertake new projects.
In other words, “market cap”, as it is known, is quite important.
Note that our list here does not include all major 3D print companies. Not all 3D print companies are publicly traded, and thus we cannot officially know their true size, such as EOS. Others, like HP or Siemens, have very large 3D printing divisions, but are part a much larger enterprises and we cannot know the true size of their 3D printing activities.
Let’s first take a look at the major 3D printing companies on this week’s list. I consider these companies “major” because their market valuations are significantly larger than others in the space.
Major Players
| RANK | COMPANY | CAP | CHG |
| 1 | Xometry | 3476 | +198 |
| 2 | 3D Systems | 3444 | +215 |
| 3 | Desktop Metal | 2363 | +69 |
| 4 | Protolabs | 2165 | -224 |
| 5 | Markforged | 1967 | +21 |
| 6 | Nano Dimension | 1575 | -22 |
| 7 | Materialise | 1266 | +93 |
| 8 | Stratasys | 1254 | -17 |
| 9 | SLM Solutions | 487 | NEW |
| 10 | ExOne | 369 | +5 |
| TOTAL | 18367 | +1716 |
This week saw minor shifts in the rankings of the major companies and another addition to our list.
Last week’s leader, newcomer Xometry, remained at the top of the list with a massive capitalization of almost US$3.5B after a slight rise this week. Second place 3D Systems had a strong week to pull close to Xometry, but remains in second place. Both companies are valued well over US$1B more than anyone else in the space.
Desktop Metal, the leader for most of this year, leapfrogged Protolabs to take third place. Their gain was likely associated with increased interest in the company after their acquisition of Aerosint, a unique technology that allows 3D printing of multiple materials using powder.
Their jump in rank was assisted by a notable drop by Protolabs, who now land in fourth place. Their drop is most likely associated with their quarterly earnings report where they missed their predicted earnings, no doubt causing the stock price to drop.
Another leapfrog occurred at seventh place, where Materialise jumped back over Stratasys in their weekly cat and mouse game. The two are almost identically valued, so slight movements in their stock price cause their position to swap.
Markforged’s data is now correctly reporting from most outlets, unlike last week.
There’s a new addition to our list, SLM Solutions, coming in at position nine. The German company produces excellent metal 3D printing equipment, and has been buoyed recently by their massive “Miracle Machine”, the NXG XII 600, which uses no fewer than twelve lasers.
Other Players
| RANK | COMPANY | CAP | CHG |
| 11 | Meatech 3D | 82 | NEW |
| 12 | voxeljet | 63 | +2 |
| 13 | ARC Group WW | 30 | 0 |
| 14 | AML3D | 20 | -1 |
| 15 | Aurora Labs | 11 | +4 |
| 16 | Tinkerine | 2 | 0 |
| TBD | Massivit | TBD | TBD |
| TOTAL | 126 | +5 |
The lesser valued companies tend to have much smaller shifts in their market capitalization because there is far less trading occurring on their stocks. The big money tends to hover around the larger players.
This week saw no changes in position, but there were some interesting valuation changes.
The biggest change was in Aurora Labs, which gained almost 50% in value. What caused that significant move?
It seems they made a number of notable announcements this week, headlined by the fact they’ve achieved a significant milestone in laser power. They can now 3D print metal powder with 1.5kW lasers, far exceeding the industry standard of 400kW, and even beyond the highest power found else where: 1.0kW. That positions them to be able to achieve their goal of 3D printing one tonne metal parts in less than 24 hours.
We’ve also added a new entry to the smaller players list, and it’s an unusual company called “Meatech” (pronounced “meat tech”). They use bioprinting techniques to 3D print cuts of meat using actual animal cells. It’s an interesting technology that we will investigate more deeply soon. This week, they top the smaller players list.
Note that we are unable to obtain Massivit’s market cap value, as it does not seem to be published, even though they are a publicly traded company on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Upcoming Changes
Two major companies have yet to appear on the stock exchanges: VELO3D and Shapeways. Both companies previously announced their intention to do so, but these moves are complex and take months to complete.
Others In The Industry
While we’ve been following the public companies, don’t forget there are a number of private companies that don’t appear on any stock exchange. These privately-held companies likely have significant value, it’s just that we can’t now exactly what it is at any moment. The suspected bigger companies include EOS, Carbon, andFormlabs.
Perhaps someday some of them will appear on our major players list.
Related Companies
Finally, there are a number of companies that are deeply engaged in the 3D print industry, but that activity is only a small slice of their operations. Thus it’s not fair to place them on the lists above because we don’t really know where their true 3D print activities lie.
