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 | $1,651 | -100 |
| 2 | Xometry | $1,556 | +114 |
| 3 | Farsoon | $1,089 | +5 |
| 4 | Proto Labs | $1,017 | +99 |
| 5 | Stratasys | $674 | +13 |
| 6 | Nano Dimension | $467 | +4 |
| 7 | Materialise | $435 | +28 |
| 8 | 3D Systems | $427 | +31 |
| 9 | Titomic | $187 | +39 |
| 10 | Desktop Metal | $147 | -3 |
| 11 | Markforged | $91 | +6 |
| 12 | AML3D | $52 | +0 |
| 13 | BigRep | $36 | +6 |
| 14 | Aurora Labs | $18 | +0 |
| 15 | Velo3D | $9 | -5 |
| 16 | Massivit | $7 | -1 |
| 17 | Steakholder Foods | $7 | -0 |
| 18 | Freemelt | $5 | +0 |
| 19 | Sygnis | $2 | -0 |
| TOTAL | $7,877 | +237 |
This week saw very positive results on the Western markets, with indexes rising 1-2%. Normally, that would bode well for the 3D print leaderboard, and in fact that’s precisely what happened. The leaderboard total valuation rose over three percent over last week.
That’s quite surprising, given that in recent months the leaderboard has NOT tracked market conditions. This has been theorized as an effect of sour investment sentiment towards 3D printing, triggered by a series of wildly overvalued companies that just haven’t lived up to expectations.
Could this week’s boost in value signal a change in that sentiment? Not at all. Discussions with a series of companies this week at Formnext revealed persistent challenges in raising investments. More than likely, the rise was due to speculators that seem to have pervaded a series of markets in the past week.
The boost wasn’t due to the Chinese exchanges, as has been the case in other weeks. In fact, top positioned Bright Laser actually dropped almost six percent this week, while Farsoon was flat on the week. That puts the valuation jumps in an even brighter light, so to speak.
Proto Labs leapt upwards eleven percent this week. The company’s recent financials showed the profitability of the operation, something quite unlike many of the other companies on the leaderboard. Manufacturing services have been quite popular among investors, and it seems Proto Labs gained some attention this week.
Rival Xometry, another manufacturing service, also rose, but “only” eight percent. This rise maintained second place on the leaderboard, but also closed the gap from first place Bright Laser to only US$93M.
For quite a long time Stratasys, Nano Dimension and 3D Systems have been close in value, with some jostling of positions, usually with Stratasys in the lead of the trio. However, this week big gains by Materialise led them to overtake 3D Systems. Meanwhile, Stratasys stretched their lead over Nano Dimension to over US$200M.
Titomic, the Australian metal 3D printing company, rose a whopping 26% this week, placing them ahead of more well-known companies like Markforged, Desktop Metal, BigRep and others. We’ve learned quite a bit about Titomic this week through discussions with their representatives, and there will be a story forthcoming.
Speaking of BigRep, the company stopped its ongoing slide by posting a huge rise in value of almost 18% this week. There was no official news from the company to support this rise, but it may be that the drop has bottomed out, and investors are speculating on gains.
Finally, we have Velo3D, which was booted off the stock market and is now traded on the over the counter markets. It’s value dropped by a third this week, but that simply places them back where they were a few weeks ago, meaning last week’s boost was the anomaly.
While not tracked on the leaderboard, there are persistent rumors of major issues at Nexa3D. The company, which recently acquired Essentium, AddiFab and others, is supposedly bankrupt, according to multiple informal sources. It’s unclear precisely what’s going on at the company, as there has been no official announcements yet. However, Nexa3D mysteriously bailed out of their enormous booking at last week’s Formnext event. Nexa3D’s CEO was seen at the event, but apparently representing QuickParts, a major 3D print service.
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.
