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 | Xometry | 1,905 | +121 |
| 2 | 3D Systems | 1,283 | -31 |
| 3 | Stratasys | 932 | +1 |
| 4 | Desktop Metal | 673 | -13 |
| 5 | Protolabs | 645 | -5 |
| 6 | Nano Dimension | 644 | -54 |
| 7 | Materialise | 582 | -24 |
| 8 | SLM Solutions | 527 | -5 |
| 9 | Velo3D | 447 | -101 |
| 10 | FATHOM | 335 | -16 |
| 11 | Markforged | 270 | -87 |
| 12 | Massivit | 55 | +0 |
| 13 | Steakholder Foods | 45 | 0 |
| 14 | Shapeways | 29 | -0 |
| 15 | Titomic | 28 | -1 |
| 16 | voxeljet | 26 | +1 |
| 17 | Freemelt | 25 | -2 |
| 18 | Sygnis | 11 | -0 |
| 19 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 11 | 0 |
| 20 | AML3D | 9 | +1 |
| 21 | Aurora Labs | 4 | -0 |
| 22 | Tinkerine | 1 | -0 |
| TOTAL | 8,487 | -235 |
This week saw a mostly flat week overall, but with mixed results for individual companies on the leaderboard. The leaderboard dropped in total value by 2.7%, which was somewhat in line with the markets in general, although exaggerated as usual.
This week’s winner was Australia-based AML3D, whose metal 3D printing systems are attracting attention from aerospace and other industries. The company has announced a series of small deals with bigger industries, which suggest there could be more to come. My suspicion is that investors see these deals as breakthroughs into industries that could significantly grow the company.
After that, most companies were flat or down, with a couple being quite notable.
First, we have Markforged, which suffered a valuation plunge of almost 25% this week. This is almost certainly due to difficult financial results posted on November 9th. In their quarterly report, the company noted a modest growth in revenue of only five percent, while their margin dropped notably. Even worse, the company’s profit switched to a loss in a swing of almost US$44M in the wrong direction as compared to 21Q3. Investors predictably dropped the stock price of the company.
Then we have Velo3D, which suffered a valuation loss of over 18% this week. This is not new territory for the company, which seems to be among the most volatile stocks on the leaderboard. Their valuation jumps up — and down — seemingly without any public news in dramatic fashion quite frequently.
So what happened this week to cause the drop?
Nothing, as far as I can tell. The company released their financials the prior week, and they were quite good. However, they did report a slight decrease in forecasted revenue as a result of ongoing component shortages. With a stock as volatile as Velo3D’s, it’s not surprising that the stock fell. I am still a firm believer that Velo3D is going to be quite successful in the long term, however.
Finally, we have one more company that actually is no longer on the leaderboard: Fast Radius. The manufacturing service has been quite troubled for some time, and finally gave up this past week by filing for Chapter 11 protection. As a result, they no longer appear on the stock exchanges and we’ve dropped them from the leaderboard.
The company went public via a SPAC arrangement this year, and as you can see in this chart, their stock price basically dropped like a rock for the entire period, finally settling on US$0.095. That’s quite a fall from their opening value of US$10. It’s unlikely we will see Fast Radius reappear on the leaderboard. What’s curious to me is why they failed when other companies with similar business models (Xometry, Protolabs, etc.) are doing quite well.
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.
