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 | 3269 | -63 |
| 2 | Xometry | 2495 | +138 |
| 3 | Protolabs | 1966 | +103 |
| 4 | Desktop Metal | 1804 | -70 |
| 5 | Stratasys | 1747 | +73 |
| 6 | VELO3D | 1441 | -39 |
| 7 | Nano Dimension | 1393 | -10 |
| 8 | Markforged | 1258 | +82 |
| 9 | Materialise | 1213 | +82 |
| 10 | Shapeways | 506 | +8 |
| 11 | ExOne | 487 | -18 |
| 12 | SLM Solutions | 460 | +5 |
| TOTAL | 18039 | +292 |
This week saw mixed results among leading 3D print companies, with several stock rising, while others fell. No change was particularly dramatic in either direction, however.
Desktop Metal and Protolabs continued their near-weekly habit of swapping places in our market capitalization table. This week Protolabs leapt over Desktop Metal by a slim US$40M in value.
Stratasys continued their rise, this week gaining almost five percent. This again is likely due to their recent announcement of the Xaar 3D acquisition that suggests they are expecting a huge boost in manufacturing activity, as well as this past week’s news of a deal to provide hospitals with certified 3D print services and materials, which could grow to a significant size in the long term. The company is in a good position to capitalize in the massive manufacturing market, perhaps more than most 3D printer manufacturers.
Newcomer Shapeways, which debuted only two weeks ago, had a healthy rise of nearly two percent over the week. This stock seems solidly at the US$500M market capitalization level, and has not had the volatility other new stocks have suffered. Perhaps this is because their business model is a bit more focused than some of the other players. Shapeways now takes tenth place in this week’s leaderboard, slightly ahead of ExOne and SLM Solutions.
Speaking of ExOne, they are a curious entry on our list. Weeks ago they agreed to an acquisition by Desktop Metal. However, since the deal has not yet closed, they still appear on the market. Once the deal closes, they will disappear from our list — and Desktop Metal will absorb their market capitalization. This will no doubt break the tie with Protolabs and put Desktop Metal into third or even second place.
Other Players
| RANK | COMPANY | CAP | CHG |
| 13 | MeaTech 3D | 82 | -25 |
| 14 | voxeljet | 63 | +4 |
| 15 | ARC Group WW | 22 | 0 |
| 16 | AML3D | 16 | +1 |
| 17 | Aurora Labs | 16 | 0 |
| 18 | Tinkerine | 2 | 0 |
| TBD | Massivit | TBD | TBD |
| TOTAL | 271 | -21 |
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 surprising turnaround for MeaTech 3D. The cultured meat bioprinting firm last week saw a massive rise in their stock price due to an announcement by a Hollywood group that includes Ashton Kutcher for marketing services. That week saw MeaTech 3D’s price rise by an amazing 35%.
That was not to last, however, as this week their market capitalization dropped by a similarly huge 24%. Evidently there were a significant number of opportunistic profit-takers based on this sudden drop. However, in the end the company is still up around ten percent over their value two weeks ago.
Another mover on the chart is voxeljet, which saw a seven percent rise. There was no specific news this week that could have driven this effect, so I presume the rise is simply the market discovering the company’s strategic agreement to supply services for offshore wind turbine construction. While they’ve been doing well in recent weeks, they are still far, far off their historic high in 2013 of US$295 per share. Today their stock price is only US$9.
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 other 3D print companies. One is FATHOM, a digital manufacturer, which has been developing a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) maneuver to complete later this year. The other is Fast Radius, a digital manufacturing cloud service.
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.
