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 | 1,725 | +136 |
| 2 | 3D Systems | 1,323 | +66 |
| 3 | Protolabs | 1,318 | -13 |
| 4 | Stratasys | 1,173 | -55 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 878 | +80 |
| 6 | Materialise | 853 | +62 |
| 7 | Desktop Metal | 787 | +129 |
| 8 | FATHOM | 538 | +16 |
| 9 | Markforged | 366 | +19 |
| 10 | Velo3D | 344 | +96 |
| 11 | SLM Solutions | 247 | +11 |
| 12 | Massivit | 70 | +6 |
| 13 | Shapeways | 63 | +5 |
| 14 | Fast Radius | 60 | -6 |
| 15 | Meatech 3D | 42 | -0 |
| 16 | Freemelt | 35 | +0 |
| 17 | voxeljet | 29 | +5 |
| 18 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 11 | 0 |
| 19 | Sygnis | 10 | -1 |
| 20 | AML3D | 9 | +3 |
| 21 | Aurora Labs | 5 | +0 |
| 22 | Tinkerine | 2 | -0 |
| TOTAL | 9,888 | +558 |
This week saw significant rises in valuation for almost all companies on the leaderboard, with a couple of exceptions. Even those exceptions, however, did drop only slightly. In all, a very good week.
At the top of our leaderboard is Xometry, the manufacturing network making extensive use of 3D printing. Their valuation soared by 9%, and was the largest absolute rise in valuation for the week. They are firmly in the first position, even though second place 3D Systems managed to rise 5%. While Xometry’s rise (and most of the other rises) was due to the general improvement in the markets, Xometry did announce an integration that could light up sales through their recent acquisition of Thomasnet. 3D Systems’ announcement of a materials partnership wasn’t enough to boost their value ahead of Xometry.
While many companies saw notable gains this week, one stands out: Velo3D. The metal 3D printer manufacturer’s beleaguered stock price has taken a significant beating since the company went public last fall. Since their debut their valuation has dropped almost each week, today leaving the value at something less than 20% of it’s opening value. This must be extraordinarily frustrating for Velo3D investors, who have a company with an incredible set of products. However, this week their value finally went strongly in the correct direction, with a massive jump of 39% in value.
What’s behind the big move? Aside from general market improvements, the company announced sale of a Sapphire XC system to Knust-Godwin, who now operate six Velo3D systems. This could signal investors that existing Velo3D clients like the equipment and want more. There are many similar manufacturers that might follow Knust-Godwin’s pattern, leading to significantly more sales for Velo3D. In addition, Velo3D announced they’ve actually sold out their entire production of equipment for the remainder of this year.
If that isn’t a strong signal to investors, I don’t know what is. Evidently investors may have finally realized Velo3D’s potential and the stock price soared, although it still has a long way to recover from its initial public valuation.
Velo3D competitor SLM Solutions’ valuation rose slightly this week, likely due to their announcement of a huge sale of two large metal 3D printing systems to a “major European automotive brand”. The unnamed client apparently is to use the equipment to produce end-use parts, and that should also be a strong signal to investors: if a company is making production parts, there is likely lots of room for more such production.
Desktop Metal also took a huge leap, rising almost 20% in value this week. While they did not have any relevant news this week, it may be that investors are finally coming to understand the synergistic value of the company’s recent acquisitions.
Nano Dimension’s valuation jumped 10% this week, likely as a result of their announcement of the acquisition of Formatec Holding. What is Formatec Holding? It turns out they own Admatec Europe, a well-known maker of production ceramic 3D printers, as well as a manufacturer of ceramic materials. This is an interesting move, and inexpensive as well, since the acquisition apparently cost only US$12.9M. Formatec Holding generated US$5.3M in revenue in 2021, with a US$2.3M profit. In a way, this brings Admatec to the leaderboard.
With all the big rises this week, the winner turned out to be tiny AML3D, an Australian producer of metal 3D printers. This week their valuation rose an incredible 46% on news that Boeing had signed a deal with the company to produce aluminum 3D printed parts. While that is a small deal, it could lead to bigger things, and that’s what investors are looking for. However, AML3D’s valuation is pretty low on our list, so it can be subject to wildly huge percentage shifts, as apparently happened this week.
Upcoming Changes
A company set to appear was Essentium, who announced plans to use a SPAC-merger to launch on NASDAQ. However, that deal has been suspended so we’re wondering what the company’s next steps might be.
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.
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.
