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 to 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 | 3730 | -21 |
| 2 | Desktop Metal | 3289 | -442 |
| 3 | Protolabs | 2415 | -32 |
| 4 | Nano Dimension | 1931 | -17 |
| 5 | Stratasys | 1449 | -16 |
| 6 | Materialise | 1245 | -282 |
| 7 | ExOne | 475 | -16 |
| TOTAL | 14534 | -783 |
This week saw one change in the rankings among the major players, and I’ll get to that. Meanwhile, 3D Systems, which jumped into the first position in recent weeks, has been quietly increasing their lead over second-place Desktop Metal. This week’s prices were generally flat or down, and 3D Systems’ price held while Desktop Metal’s dropped by almost twelve percent. There’s now a gap of near US$500M between the two.
While the other major players remained more-or-less flat, Materialise’s market cap dropped an astonishing 18.5% over the week, and this requires some explanation as it had them dropping behind Stratasys for fifth place.
It seems the company announced this week it was issuing a large quantity of ADSs, or “American Depository Shares”. An ADS is a stock held in an American bank that represents one company share. An ADS is a way for a non-US company to present tradable stocks to American investors without having to set up shop on an American exchange, and also provide convenience for American investors who don’t have to worry much about foreign exchange, unusual taxes, etc.
However, recall that Materialise is a European company whose stock already trades on the American NASDAQ, so I am a bit puzzled as to why they would take this move, rather than just issue more shares in general.
Materialise said they would be issuing 4M ADSs, at a price of US$24 each, but this US$24 price was lower than the US$28 trading range of their stock during the week. Having the company value their own stock at US$24 caused the NASDAQ trading to crash not only to US$24, but all the way down to under US$23. I suspect the US$24 value was determined by dilution of the value of current shares: they are worth less if more shares appear, which is exactly what’s happening here.
It’s puzzling why Materialise has taken this move, and perhaps there are more things going on behind the scenes than are known. Perhaps they are raising funds for some type of acquisition in the near future? The full announcements are available here.
Other Players
| RANK | COMPANY | CAP | CHG |
| 8 | voxeljet | 85 | -5 |
| 9 | ARC Group WW | 36 | 0 |
| 10 | AML3D | 21 | -2 |
| 11 | Aurora Labs | 8 | 0 |
| 12 | Tinkerine | 3 | 0 |
| TBD | Massivit | TBD | TBD |
| 154 | -7 |
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 no major changes among the lesser players in the 3D printing industry. Some were up slightly, others down, with an overall drop of US$7M for this 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
We still await the opening of trading for four major 3D print players:
- Markforged
- VELO3D
- Shapeways
- Xometry
My guess is that certainly Markforged and VELO3D will be placed in our Major Players category, as their predicted value should be more than sufficient. They may even land towards the top of the list.
The other two, Shapeways and Xometry, are harder to tell. It could be their market cap lands in-between our categories and we’ll have to make a decision on where to place them.
There are a number of privately-owned 3D printing companies that may consider going public in the coming months or years. The top five that I have my eye on include:
- Additive Industries, a producer of automated metal 3D printing equipment that’s rapidly expanding
- Carbon, a producer of resin equipment being rapidly adopted by the manufacturing industry
- Essentium, a producer of high-performance polymer 3D printers that has been quite active in fundraising
- Formlabs, a long-time producer of desktop SLA equipment that seems to be at a point where they could benefit from a public offering
- Ultimaker, another long-time producer of desktop 3D printers that has recently shifted to the professional market and has a comprehensive machine, materials and services network
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.
