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 | Stratasys | 938 | -83 |
| 2 | Xometry | 930 | -43 |
| 3 | Protolabs | 730 | -54 |
| 4 | 3D Systems | 703 | -127 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 689 | -61 |
| 6 | SLM Solutions | 634 | -9 |
| 7 | Desktop Metal | 510 | -65 |
| 8 | Materialise | 367 | -23 |
| 9 | Velo3D | 291 | -20 |
| 10 | Markforged | 243 | -22 |
| 11 | FATHOM | 63 | +2 |
| 12 | Steakholder Foods | 45 | 0 |
| 13 | Massivit | 36 | -1 |
| 14 | Shapeways | 22 | -1 |
| 15 | Freemelt | 17 | -1 |
| 16 | AML3D | 13 | -2 |
| 17 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 11 | 0 |
| 18 | voxeljet | 10 | -1 |
| 19 | Titomic | 8 | -1 |
| 20 | Sygnis | 6 | +0 |
| 21 | Aurora Labs | 4 | +2 |
| TOTAL | 6,271 | -509 |
This week was particularly terrible for the 3D print companies, with the leaderboard total dropping over 7.5%. That’s not too surprising, given that the overall markets dropped between 1-2 percent, and our companies tend to exaggerate larger trends.
Did any company “win” this week? Not really. FATHOM somehow rose three percent, but that company’s valuation had previously collapsed, so they’re still at a low valuation.
There were some interesting shifts, however.
One was 3D Systems, which plunged over 15% this week. This drop could be due to an announcement from Align, a major producer of dental aligners using 3D printing. That company announced it was acquiring Cubicure, an Austrian company that manufactures 3D printer resin. Cubicure’s technology is a “hot lithography” process that can handle more viscous resins. This enables the use of more interesting materials.
However, it turns out that Align is a major consumer of materials (and equipment) from 3D Systems. There doesn’t seem to be an overlap here, as it seems Align would be developing new dental solutions using the Cubicure technology.
However, it appears that 3D Systems investors may have thought otherwise, and the company’s stock value dropped. Perhaps they are correct, as in the long term Align just might switch technologies and/or materials away from 3D Systems, if they were to develop a workable solution.
Meanwhile, 3D Systems issued a statement indicating that everything is fine, and that their relationship with Align “remains strong”.
Nevertheless, the drop caused 3D Systems to fall into fourth place on the leaderboard, a spot they have never occupied since we started tracking valuations.
This again puts into question the company’s proposal to acquire Stratasys from a few months ago. At that time 3D Systems was far and away the largest company in the space, measured by valuation, with Stratasys way back in third or fourth place. Now the tables have turned, and there we find Stratasys’ valuation to be 33% larger than 3D Systems.
Desktop Metal curiously dropped over eleven percent this week. This came as the company announced a special meeting of stockholders to vote on the proposed merger with Stratasys.
If the shareholders vote to proceed — and company management strongly recommends voting in favor — then the deal could close in the fourth quarter.
That is, unless the deal is nixed if 3D Systems and Stratasys agree on an alternate deal between themselves. In that case, Desktop Metal would be owed a large penalty fee to cancel the merger agreement.
This week’s drop in Desktop Metal value is quite curious, as one would have thought investors would be positive about the merger proceeding. We will have to see how the voting results turn out.
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.
