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 | 3D Systems | 1,283 | +66 |
| 2 | Stratasys | 1,205 | +107 |
| 3 | Xometry | 1,036 | +146 |
| 4 | Protolabs | 921 | +57 |
| 5 | Desktop Metal | 711 | +58 |
| 6 | SLM Solutions | 638 | +5 |
| 7 | Nano Dimension | 608 | -10 |
| 8 | Materialise | 568 | -30 |
| 9 | Velo3D | 345 | -31 |
| 10 | Markforged | 189 | -7 |
| 11 | FATHOM | 54 | -5 |
| 12 | Steakholder Foods | 45 | 0 |
| 13 | Massivit | 35 | +1 |
| 14 | Shapeways | 24 | -3 |
| 15 | Freemelt | 21 | -1 |
| 16 | voxeljet | 17 | -1 |
| 17 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 11 | 0 |
| 18 | Titomic | 10 | +0 |
| 19 | AML3D | 10 | +0 |
| 20 | Sygnis | 8 | +0 |
| 21 | Aurora Labs | 4 | +0 |
| TOTAL | 7,740 | +352 |
This week saw good news for many companies. Overall the markets rose from half a percent to three percent, and on schedule the 3D print companies exaggerated that effect with a leaderboard total increase of near five percent. That’s incredibly good news for everyone.
The winner of the week is certainly Xometry, which rose over 16% in value. There was no specific news to drive this rise, but it’s probably the ongoing recovery of the company’s stock price. It dropped precipitously back in March, when they lost first spot on the leaderboard that they had held for many months.
Now we see the company’s value slowly rising, and this week fits that pattern perfectly.
Shapeways dropped almost twelve percent this week, which is a stark departure from the week’s trend. If you consider that on average there was growth of near five percent, this is almost like a 20% loss in value. The company has lost significant value since it entered the market many months ago, but in recent weeks it’s been a slow recovery trend. However, this week’s drop might be profit-taking by investors that rode the recent rise.
Finally, let’s have a look at the companies involved in the Stratasys battle: Stratasys, which is trying to merge with Desktop Metal, and Nano Dimension & 3D Systems, both of which are attempting to absorb Stratasys.
Nano Dimension, which appears to be mostly out of the running in the contest due to the Desktop Metal merger, fell nearly two percent this week, another departure from the week’s trend.
3D Systems rose five percent, likely boosted by their surprise bid for Stratasys. Investors may be interested in the massive technology consolidation that would result, but it’s not clear where that proposal is going. We will likely hear from Stratasys this week. If we don’t, then perhaps serious negotiations with Stratasys are underway behind the scenes.
Desktop Metal, which agreed to the merger proposal from Stratasys, rose a very healthy nine percent this week, again likely driven by merger fever. Stratasys posted a comprehensive document showing the benefits of the merger, and it’s likely that it was widely read by investors during the past week.
At the center of it all is Stratasys, which saw a huge rise of ten percent in value. Some of that boost could be due to market effects: if there are multiple parties bidding, then the price is sure to rise.
As of this week, the combined value of Desktop Metal and Stratasys is almost US$2B, vastly larger than Nano Dimension’s US$608M. With current rising price levels, it is increasingly unlikely Nano Dimension has sufficient cash and interest to close.
Out of curiosity, the combined value this week of Stratasys, Desktop Metal and 3D Systems, should they somehow tie up together, would be a massive US$3.2B, which would be more than 3X the next player on the leaderboard.
Exciting times!
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.
