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.
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 first take a look at the major 3D printing companies on this week’s list. I consider these companies “major” because their market valuations are significantly larger than others in the space.
Major Players
| RANK | COMPANY | CAP | CHG |
| 1 | 3D Systems | 4516 | -399 |
| 2 | Xometry | 2979 | NEW |
| 3 | Desktop Metal | 2816 | -512 |
| 4 | Protolabs | 2467 | -215 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 1916 | -266 |
| 6 | Stratasys | 1481 | -201 |
| 7 | Materialise | 1399 | +23 |
| 8 | ExOne | 447 | -65 |
| TOTAL | 17985 | +1309 |
This week saw a rather dramatic dip in values across the board, and one major change.
While last week we saw 3D Systems boom, this week they tumbled.
From a recent high of just over US$40 per share on June 28th, the stock finished the week down slightly from that high at US$36.11. This corresponds to a market cap drop of US$399M, or an 8% drop.
I think this is actually quite reasonable, because interest in 3D Systems skyrocketed over the past two weeks due to an announcement of a bioprinting move with collaborators. While this caused the stock price to move upwards, it also seems to have provoked some to cash out, causing the price weakening.
As large as an 8% loss might be, several others on our tracking list took even larger decreases in market value. ExOne, Stratasys and Nano Dimension all dropped around twelve percent, while second-position Desktop Metal dropped a whopping 15.37%, or a value of US$512M.
The Desktop Metal drop is, I believe, simply a continuation of the market seeking to find a stable level for the company’s stock after an extraordinary introduction earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Materialise actually gained almost two percent during the week.
Why the big drop? And especially during a week where the rest of the market actually went up around 2%? I suspect it’s a price correction on 3D Systems: what goes up must come down a bit as some investors take profits, something 3D Systems shareholders have long been waiting for. But when the leader in an industry drops, that tends to bring down everyone else with them. Investors may incorrectly associate 3D Systems’ scenario with other 3D print companies.
There could be one more reason for 3D Systems’ drop, as you will see: a new company may have drawn away some investment from the existing players on the list.
The biggest change in this past week is a new addition to our major players list: Xometry. Xometry is a rapidly growing manufacturing network based in Maryland, but with several other offices, including one in Europe. They announced their intention to become publicly traded only a few weeks ago, and the speed of their appearance could mean they could capture investment interest in 3D printing technologies before others come to the market.
The company’s initial market cap is nearly US$3B, placing them in second place, and knocking Desktop Metal down to third place. Xometry is behind leader 3D Systems by a significant margin, in spite of the tremendous showing on the opening day of trading. I had a suspicion they would place somewhere on our leaderboard, but second place is significant. Could this mean there are investment dollars out there looking for the right opportunity? Do these investors think less of the other major players in the 3D print industry?
Other Players
| RANK | COMPANY | CAP | CHG |
| 9 | voxeljet | 78 | -8 |
| 10 | ARC Group WW | 34 | 0 |
| 11 | AML3D | 20 | +3 |
| 12 | Aurora Labs | 8 | 0 |
| 13 | Tinkerine | 3 | 0 |
| TBD | Massivit | TBD | TBD |
| TOTAL | 143 | -5 |
The lesser valued companies tend to have much smaller shifts in their market capitalization because there is far less trading occurring on their stocks. The big money tends to hover around the larger players.
This week saw little change, as is usual with these smaller companies. However, two companies are of note.
voxeljet dropped almost ten percent, and it’s not clear why this happened. However, the company is still well within the trading range it’s been for the past four months, so it could be simple randomness.
On the positive side, we have AML3D, which gained a huge 17% over the week, with a market cap gain of U$3M. This is likely due to their announcement of an arrangement with Boeing to 3D print a mandrel tool with their Invar-36 material. While the deal on it own is not large, the implication is that if successful there could be a lot more business from giant Boeing. AML3D said:
“Although the part value being manufactured is below AUD$50,000, the significance of this initial purchase contract from Boeing is high given the size and credibility of the counterparty together with the potential commercial benefits of future collaborations with the group.”
Note that we are unable to obtain Massivit’s market cap value, as it does not seem to be published, even though they are a publicly traded company on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Upcoming Changes
With the establishment of Xometry on our leaderboard, we now await three remaining privately held 3D print companies to appear on the markets. They are: Shapeways, VELO3D, and Markforged. Based on the success of the Xometry launch, it seems that these companies will no doubt land on the major players list, perhaps in leading positions.
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 now exactly what it is at any moment. The suspected bigger companies include EOS, Carbon, Formlabs and SLM Solutions.
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.
