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 | 4004 | +248 |
| 2 | Xometry | 2986 | -109 |
| 3 | Desktop Metal | 2291 | +169 |
| 4 | Protolabs | 2120 | +111 |
| 5 | Markforged | 1708 | +170 |
| 6 | Nano Dimension | 1598 | +87 |
| 7 | Stratasys | 1459 | +140 |
| 8 | Materialise | 1409 | +163 |
| 9 | SLM Solutions | 558 | +53 |
| 10 | ExOne | 552 | +14 |
| TOTAL | 18684 | +1053 |
This week saw generally big upsides for almost all companies on our leaderboard, with the entire list rising by an impressive six percent over last week, beating the market by several percent.
While most companies saw rise in the six to ten percent range, Materialise was this week’s leader with a gain of over 13% in value. This gain was insufficient for them to leapfrog Stratasys to eighth place, they are getting dangerously close to doing so. However, Stratasys’ gain of over ten percent prevented the change in rank.
ExOne dropped one position to tenth spot, having been overtaken by SLM Solutions. My suspicion is that ExOne’s value has been dramatically inflated over the past days due to their pending acquisition by Desktop Metal. That company offered a specified value to acquire ExOne, and therefore it is unlikely that ExOne’s value will shift significantly in the period prior to acquisition.
Other Players
| RANK | COMPANY | CAP | CHG |
| 11 | MeaTech 3D | 87 | -2 |
| 12 | voxeljet | 54 | 0 |
| 13 | ARC Group WW | 26 | 0 |
| 14 | AML3D | 17 | -1 |
| 15 | Aurora Labs | 16 | +4 |
| 16 | Tinkerine | 3 | 0 |
| TBD | Massivit | TBD | TBD |
| TOTAL | 202 | +1 |
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 basically flat results for the smaller players, with one notable exception.
Aurora Labs, an Australian developer of a high-volume metal 3D printer, saw their value skyrocket by an amazing 35% in a single week. This is perhaps the biggest jump we’ve seen in any company since we started tracking months ago.
Surprisingly, Aurora Labs was even higher in mid-week, as their stock price rose peaked at AU$0.16 before eventually settling at AU$0.14.
What could be the reason for this massive leap in value? It may be that something in their annual report, released only days ago, was responsible. However, an inspection of the report did not reveal anything particularly notable to me, aside from the fact that the company apparently suspended development of their metal 3D printer while they relocated operations to a smaller, “more fit for purpose” facility. This move will save the company some AU$240K per year, which is certainly good, but is not sufficient to warrant such a leap in value.
I believe what is happening here is that investors may be noticing that the company is indeed slowly making their way through their development milestones and partnerships that have were prominently displayed in their annual report. That information should not be news to Fabbaloo readers, as we’ve been reporting on their progress as they happen. However, it could be that general investors have not seen these developments until pointed out in the annual report. Regardless of how this happened, it’s certainly good news for Aurora Labs.
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.
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.
