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 | Bright Laser | $2,823 | +87 |
| 2 | Farsoon | $2,316 | +42 |
| 3 | Xometry | $1,302 | +28 |
| 4 | Proto Labs | $867 | -23 |
| 5 | Stratasys | $726 | -1 |
| 6 | Nano Dimension | $372 | -95 |
| 7 | Materialise | $294 | -6 |
| 8 | 3D Systems | $287 | -63 |
| 9 | Titomic | $205 | -19 |
| 10 | Desktop Metal | $166 | +92 |
| 11 | Markforged | $95 | +39 |
| 12 | AML3D | $54 | +5 |
| 13 | Aurora Labs | $15 | -1 |
| 14 | Massivit | $8 | +0 |
| 15 | Sygnis | $5 | +2 |
| 16 | Steakholder Foods | $3 | -1 |
| 17 | Freemelt | $3 | -0 |
| 18 | BigRep | $0 | -28 |
| TOTAL | $9,542 | +57 |
This week saw disastrous results on the major Western stock exchanges, almost certainly due to uncertainty raised by US tariffs and subsequent retaliatory tariffs from other countries. Some of the exchanges were down this week almost four percent, which is quite terrible.
The leaderboard total somehow remained flat, but there seem to be a number of unusual circumstances at play.
At the top of the leaderboard, we have the two Chinese companies, Bright Laser and Farsoon, which both saw reasonable rises in valuation. It is possible they were somewhat immune to the drama playing out on Western exchanges.
Also note that their valuations now make up 54% of the total value of the entire leaderboard. This tells us two things: first, minor shifts in their valuations can dramatically override any other shifts from the smaller companies. The second is that Western 3D printing companies are definitely falling behind.
The big news of the week had to do with the Desktop Metal lawsuit. Here’s what happened: Nano Dimension struck deals with Merge/Acquire both Desktop Metal and Markforged. Nano Dimension shareholders were not pleased and ultimately took over the board and changed company management. The two deals were left in limbo as they had not completed. Desktop Metal launched a lawsuit to force Nano Dimension to complete the deal, worth over US$100M, to be completed ASAP. This week, the lawsuit concluded with Desktop Metal winning, presumably forcing Nano Dimension to finish the deal.
This caused Desktop Metal’s valuation to skyrocket 123% — basically back to the value of the merger deal — whereas it had been suspiciously lower in past weeks due to the uncertainty. Markforged, which had not launched a similar lawsuit, saw their valuation jump by 69%. It may be that investors now see the Markforged deal also being completed.
Meanwhile, Nano Dimension’s valuation plummeted by over 20% as investors realized the company would now have to spend the money to complete the deals.
3D Systems released their financials this week, which were mixed. Revenue, profit, and margin were all down significantly. However, expenses were reduced significantly, and the overall loss (both quarter and annual) was reduced.
It seems, however, that investors interpreted that information mostly negatively, as the company’s valuation fell 18% this week.
Then there’s the case of BigRep, which went public only last fall. The company’s valuation has been up and down in recent months, generally falling very significantly from its initial valuation on the market.
This week I noticed the valuation for the company (B1GR) was listed as “zero”. Normally this is some kind of bug in the feeds, so I checked with several other sources and found the same value. Evidently the company’s stock was being traded the previous day at €1.54, so it’s not clear to me what’s going on. There are no official announcements from BigRep, nor on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, where the company is traded. The company does not appear in any suspension notice.
A notice posted earlier by BigRep does state the delisting of “BigRep SE” (the successor company name after the SPAC move to enter the market) on 28 February, which would normally indicate the company is to be taken private, off the market. However, that’s a month ago, so again it’s not clear what’s happening at BigRep.
I’ve left them on the leaderboard for the moment, but it may be that they disappear in coming weeks if official announcements indicate a change in the company’s status.
Upcoming Changes
We’ve heard very little about companies intending to become publicly traded recently. This is due to the ongoing lack of investor interest in the technology. The technology’s reputation has suffered immensely in the investment community because of multiple large-scale investment failures in the past few years.
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.
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