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 | 1,733 | +159 |
| 2 | 3D Systems | 1,389 | +147 |
| 3 | Protolabs | 1,326 | +62 |
| 4 | Stratasys | 1,298 | +121 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 862 | -10 |
| 6 | Materialise | 839 | +54 |
| 7 | Desktop Metal | 762 | +38 |
| 8 | Velo3D | 537 | +132 |
| 9 | FATHOM | 533 | +15 |
| 10 | Markforged | 381 | +24 |
| 11 | SLM Solutions | 284 | +16 |
| 12 | Massivit | 81 | +4 |
| 13 | Fast Radius | 44 | -1 |
| 14 | Meatech 3D | 43 | +2 |
| 15 | Shapeways | 42 | -12 |
| 16 | Freemelt | 38 | +2 |
| 17 | voxeljet | 29 | -0 |
| 18 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 11 | 0 |
| 19 | Sygnis | 10 | +0 |
| 20 | AML3D | 8 | +1 |
| 21 | Aurora Labs | 5 | -1 |
| 22 | Tinkerine | 2 | +0 |
| TOTAL | 10,256 | +752 |
This week saw quite good results for most companies, as the markets were all up almost two percent. However, as is the pattern, the 3D print companies exaggerate the general trend, so we saw our leaderboard jump by almost eight percent this week!
Most companies saw healthy leaps in valuation this week, with plenty of companies grabbing between five and ten percent gains.
The winner of the week by a country mile was Velo3D, whose value soared by over 32% this week. This is quite remarkable, as the company’s value has suffered tremendously for months, dropping each week.
Until two weeks ago. And now, this week, too. To put this in perspective, the company’s value at the beginning of July was approximately US$248M. This week it’s US$537M! This stock has doubled in a month!
I’ve always been puzzled why the market treated Velo3D so badly. They have exceptionally good technology in an exploding metal 3D printing market, particularly aerospace, and clearly should be on the rise. I suppose it took some time for investors to finally realize the inherent value of the company, and now it’s back on the rise.
There was an announcement late Thursday indicating Velo3D had partnered with Hartech Group to provide a “turn key” method of obtaining equipment for US government clients, which is certainly good news. But I think that in general investors are looking more favorably towards Velo3D.
I should note, however, that Velo3D’s stock price actually peaked early Friday at the stratospheric level of US$3.42, which corresponds to a valuation of around US$629M. The value fell a bit throughout Friday, leaving them at “only” a 32% rise for the week.
Velo3D rose to eighth place on the leaderboard.
On the other end of the scale we have Shapeways. This week the company’s valuation dropped more than 22%, a significant change. The company’s valuation has been more or less consistently dropping since they entered public trading back in September 2021. To date they’ve shed over 90% of their initial value, which must certainly irk early investors.
The company is in tough against several well-funded players in the manufacturing network space, where they’ve had to pivot from their early consumer-based service. There are definitely winners in this area, including Xometry, Protolabs and others, but somehow Shapeways isn’t seen as having as much potential as the others.
Shapeways fell to fifteenth place on the leaderboard.
Finally, I want to mention Nano Dimension, which announced they’ve acquired a twelve percent stake in Stratasys this week. This is a surprising move, and one that might hint at a future consolidation between the two companies. But did this news affect each company’s valuation?
For Stratasys, their valuation rose over ten percent, which might sound notable. However, 3D Systems, Xometry, Velo3D and others also gained more than ten percent this week. At best, I suspect this move added a couple of percent to Stratasys’ valuation this week.
Meanwhile, Nano Dimension’s valuation actually dropped a little over one percent. This is not surprising, as “acquiring a stake” means they’ve put out some cash to do the deal. It may also mean that investors believe the deal is better for Stratasys than it is for Nano Dimension.
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.
