Which 3D print company is the biggest? [Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay]
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 | 3651 | -106 |
| 2 | Xometry | 2432 | -171 |
| 3 | Desktop Metal | 2059 | +47 |
| 4 | Protolabs | 1987 | -121 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 1486 | -37 |
| 6 | Stratasys | 1416 | -86 |
| 7 | Markforged | 1386 | -57 |
| 8 | Materialise | 1253 | -130 |
| 9 | ExOne | 525 | +3 |
| 10 | SLM Solutions | 499 | +23 |
| TOTAL | 16693 | -636 |
This week saw generally poor results for 3D print companies. While the market overall grew throughout the week, recovering from fears from a potential real estate crash to come in China, 3D print companies seemed mostly immune to these effects, positive and negative.
There were some changes in the leaderboard, however.
Desktop Metal leapt over Protolabs to take on third place. The two companies are relatively similar in market value, and week-to-week variations push one up over the other on a regular basis. However, Desktop Metal has been down lately, so this week’s rise of almost three percent was enough to overtake Protolabs, which lost nearly six percent.
Other companies lost between two to ten percent value, with two exceptions.
One was ExOne, which remained flat. This is likely due to drag by Desktop Metal, which obtained an agreement to purchase the company earlier this year. When Desktop Metal rises, so does ExOne.
Another notable exception to the week’s bad news was SLM Solutions, which was clearly the week’s winner with a gain of near five percent. This is likely due to their announcement of a massive sale of two SLM 500s and one NXG XII 600, the gigantic metal 3D printer the company announced earlier this year. If they are able to sell NXG XII 600s, that should generate very significant revenue for the company. Quite positive news.
Other Players
| RANK | COMPANY | CAP | CHG |
| 11 | MeaTech 3D | 85 | +3 |
| 12 | voxeljet | 58 | +7 |
| 13 | ARC Group WW | 21 | 0 |
| 14 | Aurora Labs | 17 | -1 |
| 15 | AML3D | 15 | -2 |
| 16 | Tinkerine | 2 | 0 |
| TBD | Massivit | TBD | TBD |
| TOTAL | 199 | +8 |
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 significant moves, yet no actual changes in leaderboard positions.
Leader MeaTech 3D gained four percent, while voxeljet gained a whopping 14.26% in value over the past week.
Why the huge gain for voxeljet? I suspect it may have something to do with their announcement last week of a deal to produce massive 3D printers for the production of huge offshore wind turbines. My thought was that this is essentially a small kind of monopoly operation, and so it should be valued highly. However, voxeljet did not move on the news, and perhaps this week’s gain is the market finally understanding the importance of their announcement.
Aurora Labs, which recently moved into 14th spot over AML3D, lost more than six percent. However, this drop did not allow AML3D to leapfrog them because that company lost nearly twelve percent in value over the week.
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.
FATHOM could also take a place on the major players leaderboard, as they are also set to appear on the market this year.
This week we learned that VELO3D is set to hit the market on September 30, and they are very likely to take a mid-level position or higher on the leaderboard. If you are considering getting in on a company just as they enter the market, this is certainly one of those opportunities.
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.
