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.
You might think it’s not important to monitor these companies each week, as their value is realized only when stocks are sold. However, events happen to companies occasionally that cause their value to rise and fall, and this weekly post is where we track such things.
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 take a look at the 3D printing companies on this week’s list.
3D Printing Leaderboard
| RANK | COMPANY | CAP | CHG |
| 1 | Xometry | 1,630 | +64 |
| 2 | Protolabs | 1,005 | -10 |
| 3 | Stratasys | 988 | +81 |
| 4 | 3D Systems | 847 | +19 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 608 | -0 |
| 6 | Materialise | 388 | -9 |
| 7 | Desktop Metal | 245 | -1 |
| 8 | Markforged | 163 | +20 |
| 9 | Velo3D | 80 | -35 |
| 10 | Massivit | 33 | +1 |
| 11 | FATHOM | 30 | +0 |
| 12 | Titomic | 27 | +4 |
| 13 | Freemelt | 21 | +3 |
| 14 | Shapeways | 16 | +2 |
| 15 | AML3D | 15 | -0 |
| 16 | Steakholder Foods | 15 | +1 |
| 17 | voxeljet | 12 | +0 |
| 18 | Aurora Labs | 5 | +1 |
| 19 | Sygnis | 5 | -0 |
| 20 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 2 | +0 |
| TOTAL | 6,134 | +140 |
This week saw a great deal of news, considering it’s the end of the year and “things should be quiet”.
The leaderboard rose another healthy 2.5%, down from last week’s huge boost, but still pretty significant. However, this week’s overall gains were driven by two specific companies.
The first is Xometry, position one on the leaderboard. The company rose almost 4.5% this week, showing investors are still renewing their interest in the manufacturing service. Xometry had suddenly dropped a great deal earlier this year, and in recent weeks it has been recovering. The trend continues this week.
The second biggest influence on this week’s leaderboard total was Stratasys. The company had been the subject of multiple takeover bids earlier this year, all of which amounted to nothing in the end. They did, however, drive up the company’s stock price.
That is all happening again with the surprise restart of takeover bids from rival Nano Dimension, which is sitting on a huge cash hoard and looking for something to spend it on: Stratasys. Just like it unfolded earlier this year, Stratasys’ valuation leapt upwards. This week the company added nine percent, while rival 3D Systems rose only 2.5%. Meanwhile, takeover artist Nano Dimension was flat, showing that investors are not particularly confident in the renewed bid.
Markforged rose 14% this week, but there was no corporate news driving the shift. It seems to me that this is a bit of a bounce, as the company’s value dipped significantly in recent weeks, resulting in a notice from the stock exchange. The will likely push the company into a reverse stock split. However, this week’s gain is probably investors seeking a good deal as they may have felt the dip was a bit too deep.
Another big mover this week was Titomic, which has been the subject of rather suspicious upward moves lately. So suspicious that the Australian stock market requested an official explanation — more than once. Their movement continues this week with a 19% jump. They’re now larger than Shapeways.
Speaking of Shapeways, they rose over 16% this week. Why the rise? It seems that investors were perked up by the company’s announcement of “reductions in force” (layoffs) to the tune of 15% of their total headcount. They’re expected to save US$6.2M in annual cost savings because of this, which looks good to investors. Not so good to former staff, however.
Finally, we have Velo3D, the most volatile 3D printer stock on any exchange. The company’s valuation has jumped up and down ever since it went public only a couple of years ago. This week the valuation dropped a massive 30% on news that the company’s CEO and founder, Benny Buller, was out and their board has initiated a search for a replacement.
It’s one thing replace a CEO with a new one that is suitable for a new corporate strategy, but another to release a CEO without having the replacement on hand. This obviously unsettled investors, who drove the valuation down a huge amount. Velo3D has one of the most interesting metal 3D printing technologies on the market, and I’m hoping they can find their way forward.
Upcoming Changes
BigRep announced plans to go public via the SPAC approach, so we will soon see them appear on the leaderboard.
One company I’ve started to watch is ICON, the Texas-based construction 3D printer manufacturer. This privately-held company has been raising a significant amount of investment to the tune of almost half a billion dollars. At that level it is likely they will be discussing a transition to public markets at some point, which would certainly place them at or near the top of our leaderboard.
Another company that would seem logical to go public is VulcanForms, a manufacturing service using an advanced metal 3D printing process. They are currently privately valued at over US$1B, and going public could cause that to go even higher.
If you are aware of any other publicly-traded 3D print companies that should be on our leaderboard, please let us know!
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 know exactly what it is at any moment. The suspected bigger companies include EOS, Carbon and Formlabs.
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.
