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 | Stratasys | 1,283 | -115 |
| 2 | 3D Systems | 1,159 | -41 |
| 3 | Xometry | 1,011 | -10 |
| 4 | Protolabs | 858 | -26 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 818 | +15 |
| 6 | SLM Solutions | 652 | -6 |
| 7 | Desktop Metal | 572 | -11 |
| 8 | Materialise | 470 | -32 |
| 9 | Markforged | 436 | +203 |
| 10 | Velo3D | 398 | -33 |
| 11 | FATHOM | 80 | +21 |
| 12 | Steakholder Foods | 45 | 0 |
| 13 | Massivit | 38 | +2 |
| 14 | Shapeways | 32 | +4 |
| 15 | Freemelt | 21 | -0 |
| 16 | voxeljet | 15 | -1 |
| 17 | Titomic | 12 | +7 |
| 18 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 11 | 0 |
| 19 | AML3D | 10 | -0 |
| 20 | Sygnis | 8 | +0 |
| 21 | Aurora Labs | 4 | +0 |
| TOTAL | 7,932 | -24 |
This week saw healthy gains of up to two percent on the markets in general, so we would expect to see the leaderboard gain even more than that. However, this wasn’t the case as the leaderboard total dropped under half a percent on the week. This was in spite of some companies gaining tremendously this week.
The story of the week was clearly Markforged, which gained a whopping 90% in value from last week. That’s one of the largest week-to-week gains we’ve seen since starting the leaderboard.
What caused this massive boost in value? Apparently nothing! Markforged issued no notable press releases, aside from an announcement of their Q2 financials release early in August.
That wouldn’t normally trigger such a massive shift in value, unless something is going on behind the scenes. It may be that those in the know expect stellar financials to be presented that would boost the stock price. However, this could just as easily be speculation on the financials with over-eager investors. My guess is that the valuation will drop by next week as investors take quick profits.
FATHOM also rose spectacularly, with a gain over over 34% this week. Again there was no specific company news to drive this shift, but the rise is part of a pattern that’s emerged over the past month that’s taken FATHOM from where they bottomed out. Can this rise continue?
Shapeways also rose notably, gaining 15%. This time there was specific news that likely drove the increase in value: the company has “secured two significant contracts” in the healthcare industry. The value of the contracts is said to be US$2.5M annually for the next three years. If Shapeways is able to secure similar contracts — which could be more likely if they’ve already bagged one — then they could be set to increase revenue, and that could be what caused investors to boost the valuation this week.
Titomic saw a massive rise in valuation of almost 150% this week. This is a very small company, so big swings are a characteristic. However, the company has recently secured contracts with Boeing, which has likely just been discovered by major investors.
It’s worth discussing the Stratasys takeover participants. Stratasys, the subject of the takeover drama, has recently been driven up to the top of the leaderboard. This week they fell a little over eight percent, with key bidder 3D Systems dropping about three percent. This is likely a settling back after merger frenzy drove these stocks higher in recent weeks. As the discussions seem to be converging on a merger with 3D Systems, investors must be determining the true level of the future merged entity.
Desktop Metal, which is increasingly likely to be left to the side in the deal, dropped two percent.
Nano Dimension, the company that triggered this situation, formally dropped out of the action late this past week. They rose in value almost two percent, perhaps a reward from investors for the decision.
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.
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.
