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 | Protolabs | 919 | +27 |
| 2 | Xometry | 861 | +97 |
| 3 | Stratasys | 749 | +19 |
| 4 | 3D Systems | 646 | +86 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 620 | -8 |
| 6 | Materialise | 361 | +32 |
| 7 | Desktop Metal | 265 | +13 |
| 8 | Velo3D | 195 | -78 |
| 9 | Markforged | 177 | +20 |
| 10 | FATHOM | 31 | -1 |
| 11 | Massivit | 27 | +2 |
| 12 | Freemelt | 18 | -1 |
| 13 | Steakholder Foods | 14 | +0 |
| 14 | Shapeways | 14 | +1 |
| 15 | voxeljet | 13 | +1 |
| 16 | AML3D | 11 | -2 |
| 17 | Titomic | 6 | -1 |
| 18 | Sygnis | 6 | +0 |
| 19 | Aurora Labs | 4 | +0 |
| 20 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 2 | -1 |
| TOTAL | 4,939 | +209 |
This week saw a return to normal trends: the markets overall rose 2-3 percent, and the 3D companies exaggerated that trend by rising 4.5% on the week.
As usual, there were several significant deviations from the pattern.
On the positive side, we have 3D Systems, which rose a massive 15% over the week. This was no doubt due to the release of their quarterly financials, which showed slightly less revenue, but significantly increased margins. That’s likely due to cost cutting moves they’ve been implementing, and now they’re showing up in the financial results. 3D Systems managed to notably cut down their loss from US$34M in 3Q22 to only US$14M in 3Q23. Investors seemed to have jumped on this news, boosting the company value. However, the company, like many in the 3D print industry, remains unprofitable at this time.
Xometry also boosted their valuation by almost 13% this week. That’s certainly because their financials showed strong revenue growth of 15%. Unlike most other companies, they showed significant profit, and it’s increasing. It’s no surprise they are near the top of the leaderboard.
On the other side, we have Velo3D, which for some reason has by far the most volatile valuation on the leaderboard. This week their value fell by a whopping 29%. This is very peculiar, as their financials actually looked quite good to me. Their revenue was up substantially from 3Q22, their margins were slightly down, and their quarterly loss was significantly less than 3Q22. In addition, they’ve done some cost cutting that should aid the financials going forward. In fact, they predict expenses to decrease by an amazing 40% by 1Q24.
Why their valuation dropped so much is totally beyond me.
Markforged rose over twelve percent this week. In a stark contrast to Velo3D, Markforged’s financials did not look terribly good: their revenue and margins were down, their expenses were up, and net loss more than doubled. Why investors pushed up Markforged’s valuation and dropped Velo3D’s is quite baffling.
Upcoming Changes
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.
