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 | 1,589 | -62 |
| 2 | Protolabs | 1,331 | +27 |
| 3 | 3D Systems | 1,256 | -56 |
| 4 | Stratasys | 1,228 | -14 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 798 | 0 |
| 6 | Materialise | 792 | -39 |
| 7 | Desktop Metal | 658 | -133 |
| 8 | FATHOM | 522 | -62 |
| 9 | Markforged | 348 | -77 |
| 10 | Velo3D | 248 | -98 |
| 11 | SLM Solutions | 236 | +5 |
| 12 | Fast Radius | 66 | +34 |
| 13 | Massivit | 64 | +1 |
| 14 | Shapeways | 58 | +2 |
| 15 | Meatech 3D | 42 | -4 |
| 16 | Freemelt | 34 | -7 |
| 17 | voxeljet | 25 | -0 |
| 18 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 11 | 0 |
| 19 | Sygnis | 11 | -0 |
| 20 | AML3D | 6 | -2 |
| 21 | Aurora Labs | 5 | -1 |
| 22 | Tinkerine | 2 | +0 |
| TOTAL | 9,330 | -487 |
This week saw several wild swings in valuation, both up and down.
While Xometry retains first place on the Leaderboard, 3D Systems slipped to third place, after having held second place for quite some time. They just happened to lose a few percent this week, while third place Protolabs happened to gain a few percent to relegate 3D Systems down a notch. These shifts are not significant, and it’s just that the two companies happened to have very close valuations. It’s likely they will bounce around in future weeks.
The big winner of the week was Fast Radius, which saw a — get this — 108% rise in value. That’s correct, they literally doubled in value! I believe this is the first time we’ve seen a company do this since we started the Leaderboard.
What caused this tremendous rocket to the Moon? It’s a combination of things. While there was no specific news this week to trigger the shift, this company’s valuation has a bit of a history. It was launched only this past January as part of SPAC merger, and at the time of launch the stock price was US$10.00. However, for a variety of reasons the stock’s value plummeted in subsequent weeks, landing at a rock bottom around the forty cent range in the past month or two. Note — that’s a 96% loss for those who invested early in this company.
This week we saw a rise in value to US$0.89, which is indeed double from the prior week. However, it’s still 91% down from its original valuation.
My thought is that there seems to be increasing investor interest in manufacturing service companies using 3D printing, such as Xometry (currently in top position on the Leaderboard), Protolabs and others. It may be that Fast Radius took a bit of the shine from those other companies with higher valuations, particularly after Fast Radius announced positive earnings per share in their May report on 1Q22 results.
In other words, while the percentage rise this week is notable, it’s not all that impressive considering the company’s valuation history. In fact, analysts have posted forecasts of US$3-4 per share for the company, and it’s still well below that.
A series of other companies suffered significant losses in valuation this week, including Markforged (-18%), Desktop Metal (-17%), AML3D (-27%), Aurora Labs (-20%) and Velo3D (-28%).
I’m most disappointed in Velo3D’s results, as the company had finally had a positive week on the Leaderboard last week, after a seemingly unending series of decreases. This week’s dramatic loss in value seems to maintain the company’s downward curve.
My thought is that it simply has to do with the financial results. While the company has outstanding products and incredible technology, their revenue is still far below their expenses. In the past year they’ve posted quarterly losses ranging from US$10M to over US$60M. That is obviously scaring investors and depressing the stock price. However, the company is still relatively new and their revenue is clearly increasing steadily, quarter by quarter. If Velo3D has sufficient funding to survive the growth period, they will be a very successful company in the long run. Interest in their technology is only increasing in industry, and no other companies can do with Velo3D can do.
Finally, there’s one more change to the Leaderboard. Sigma Labs is now operating as “Sigma Additive Solutions”, so we’ll continue tracking them under that name.
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.
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.
