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 | 1,494 | -121 |
| 2 | Protolabs | 917 | -33 |
| 3 | Stratasys | 897 | -27 |
| 4 | 3D Systems | 660 | +19 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 648 | +23 |
| 6 | Materialise | 331 | -6 |
| 7 | Desktop Metal | 194 | -7 |
| 8 | Markforged | 128 | -1 |
| 9 | Velo3D | 70 | +4 |
| 10 | Massivit | 43 | +2 |
| 11 | FATHOM | 29 | -1 |
| 12 | Freemelt | 21 | +2 |
| 13 | Titomic | 17 | -2 |
| 14 | Steakholder Foods | 17 | +3 |
| 15 | Shapeways | 13 | -0 |
| 16 | AML3D | 11 | -1 |
| 17 | voxeljet | 10 | +0 |
| 18 | Sygnis | 5 | -0 |
| 19 | Aurora Labs | 5 | +0 |
| 20 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 3 | +0 |
| TOTAL | 5,512 | -145 |
This week saw was particularly terrible for 3D print companies. The markets were all up this week, sometimes by several percent. However, our leaderboard total dropped by 2.6%.
This could be due to various circumstances at particular companies, or it may also be a sign of weakening interest in the technology by investors due to poor performance by key companies.
In spite of the valuation dips experienced by most companies this week, there were a few exceptions. One was Steakholder Foods, which announced a massive deal this week to deliver their 3D printed meat products through a major food distributor. This is the first time 3D printed food has entered the normal production food chain, and investors rewarded the company with a massive 21% boost in value this week.
Another gainer was Freemelt, the Swedish maker of metal 3D printing systems. It seems that investors are beginning to notice that the company has shifted from experimental systems to production systems, which increases their market potential.
Massivit also posted significant gains this week, most likely due to the announcement that Disney had acquired one of their systems. Massivit’s equipment is ideal for printing large display items, something Disney would have a great need to make. It may be that investors see this as the wedge in the door, as Disney could almost certainly make use of many more similar systems.
Velo3D bounced back with a near seven percent boost this week. The company’s valuation plummeted after the departure of their founder a few weeks ago. However, that now seems to have bottomed out and the company could be set for growth with their new CEO becoming much more visible.
At the top of the leaderboard Xometry fell 7.5% this week, posting the largest dollar value loss of any of the companies. Protolabs, in second place, also fell 3.5% in spite of good financial results. That tells you something about investor sentiment lately.
As for the three amigos, Stratasys, 3D Systems and Nano Dimension, which are engaged in off-and-on takeover battles for the past year.
Stratasys remains larger than the other two by quite a margin. This week Nano Dimension’s valuation grew by 3.6%, while 3D Systems’ rose by only 2.9%. This places Nano Dimension just behind 3D Systems. In fact, there were moments this week when Nano Dimension’s valuation was momentarily larger than 3D Systems.
Note, however, that Nano Dimension is sitting a large cash reserve that somehow exceeds their current valuation. I still struggle with this: how could a company be worth less than their bank account?
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.
