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.
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 | 3331 | -134 |
| 2 | Xometry | 2357 | +38 |
| 3 | Desktop Metal | 1874 | +5 |
| 4 | Protolabs | 1863 | +9 |
| 5 | Stratasys | 1674 | +262 |
| 6 | VELO3D | 1480 | -170 |
| 7 | Nano Dimension | 1403 | 0 |
| 8 | Markforged | 1176 | +26 |
| 9 | Materialise | 1130 | -14 |
| 10 | ExOne | 505 | -12 |
| 11 | Shapeways | 498 | +72 |
| 12 | SLM Solutions | 455 | -11 |
| TOTAL | 16612 |
This week saw mostly flat results among our leaderboard, with minor shifts. However, there were a couple of interesting moves.
VELO3D, which debuted on the leaderboard only last week, suffered a 10% drop in value over the week. This is most likely due to an over exuberance from the initial investors, who were scrambling to get in on the ground floor as the stock debuted. Then, some profit taking occurred and the stock dropped. This is not unexpected, and has no implication on VELO3D’s performance in the long term.
However, this drop allowed Stratasys to vault over VELO3D to take fifth place on the leaderboard. Stratasys had a massive gain of almost 19% this week.
Why the big gain? It almost certainly because of Stratasys’ acquisition of Xaar 3D Ltd on October 6th. That acquisition both solidified the company’s hold on a key manufacturing technology, but also signaled they are expecting massive growth in their manufacturing business in coming years. Evidently investors understood this and pushed the stock value up correspondingly.
Another mover during the week was Shapeways, which coincidentally also debuted on the market last week. Their value skyrocketed by almost 17% over the week. As there has been no news of note for Shapeways over the week, I suspect the volatile pricing is a result of investors struggling to find a stable level for the company’s stock.
Other Players
| RANK | COMPANY | CAP | CHG |
| 13 | MeaTech 3D | 108 | +28 |
| 14 | voxeljet | 59 | -4 |
| 15 | ARC Group WW | 22 | 0 |
| 16 | AML3D | 16 | +2 |
| 17 | Aurora Labs | 15 | 0 |
| 18 | Tinkerine | 2 | 0 |
| TBD | Massivit | TBD | TBD |
| TOTAL | 222 | +26 |
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 a minor swap in rank by AML3D and Aurora Labs, both Australian 3D printing companies. The two are both producing metal 3D printers, although radically different in design. They have nearly the same valuation, so they can change positions from week to week.
The big news in this group is the leader, MeaTech 3D, who are developing systems for 3D printing cultured meat. Their company valuation rose by an astonishing 35% over the week.
The reason for this dramatic move is certainly due to their announcement of a deal with a “collective” led by actor Ashton Kutcher and entertainment executive Guy Oseary. Evidently the partner group will assist MeaTech 3D in developing their products, most likely in the marketing area.
Ashton Kutcher explained:
“We are delighted to partner with MeaTech and assist it in its journey to become the market leader in cultured meat production. We are excited about MeaTech’s innovative technologies, which we believe position MeaTech to be the leader in industrial scale production of cultured meat, a key for a more sustainable and clean meat production. We intend to work closely with MeaTech’s management to help MeaTech implement its strategy and achieve its goals and global success by leveraging our marketing, strategic expertise, and network. The engagement with MeaTech is in line with our group’s mission to provide sustainable solutions through company building, investment, and acceleration of companies and technologies across various sustainability domains.”
That said, the valuation rise is certainly due to the notoriety of these individuals, whose followers were thus made aware of MeaTech 3D and subsequently drove up the price. Publicity always helps!
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 are still awaiting the appearance on the market of two major companies, Shapeways and VELO3D, both of which are likely to take positions on the major players list.
One more additive company that’s expected to appear on the market is FATHOM, which has been developing a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) maneuver to complete later this year.
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.
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.
