The Nano Dimension saga appears to be coming to a final conclusion with a rather strange corporate announcement.
Nano Dimension has been one of the most interesting 3D printer companies for the past several years. After gaining a massive amount of investment, the company went on an acquisition spree, buying up half a dozen different companies in a failed attempt to corner the market.
The failure was evident to the company’s shareholders, who ultimately revolted and booted out the management, and replaced them with others more attuned to shareholder needs.
The new management undertook a strategic review, which would determine exactly how they would move forward given their position.
The company then started divesting itself of many of the acquisitions that the previous management had completed. For example, the most recent divestiture was selling off MarkForged to Stratasys. You can see the whole timeline of events here.
They sold off or shut down virtually all of the 3D print technology acquisitions, leading one to ponder whether they were still a 3D printer company at all.
Now we know the answer to that question: No.
That’s because of the announcement last week:
“Nano Dimension Ltd. today announced it has entered into a non-binding term sheet for a proposed business combination (“combination”) with Infinite Epigenetics™ (“Infinite Epigenetics,” “Infinite”), an artificial intelligence (“AI”)-powered preventive health and diagnostics company building a proprietary biological AI platform to read, interpret, and apply epigenetic signals at scale.”
Epigenetics is the science of DNA management, where genes are turned off and on according to various stimuli.
You are correct in thinking that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with 3D printing.
You are also probably wondering why the heck Nano Dimension would merge with Infinite Epigenetics at all. What’s the play here?
Why would a smaller company, Nano Dimension, acquire a much larger company, Infinite Epigenetics?
It seems that after selling off assets, Nano Dimension found themselves left with one key asset: they are listed on the NASDAQ exchange. Their strategic review clearly set about to monetize that asset.
And this approach is actually done fairly often; it’s called a “SPAC”. That stands for Special Purpose Acquisition Company. The idea is that it is very challenging to do all the work necessary to become tradable on a public exchange, a.k.a. an “IPO”, initial public offering.
Some companies wishing to become tradable quickly make arrangements with another company that’s already tradable to “buy them”. Then the newly merged company is instantly on the exchange with minimal paperwork.
Typically, this is done by using SPACs that have specifically been set up for this purpose: basically empty holding companies with no business activity that went through a relatively simple IPO process. Then the owners look for a way to monetize it by merging with a bigger company looking to get on the exchange.
This situation is somewhat different: Nano Dimension was an active company, but then sold off everything to become a SPAC.
In the deal, Nano Dimension shareholders will end up with a “minority” portion of the new company, said to be worth 20% more than their current share value. It seems that was the best that Nano Dimension management could do in the situation. Additionally, it’s likely that Nano Dimension shareholders were looking for a way to cash out, especially after all the unusual activity during the past few years.
The new company is apparently going to trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol IEAI, with no 3D print activity on the radar. In fact, the press release does not even contain the words “3D” or “additive”. We will be removing Nano Dimension from our weekly valuation leaderboard.
Thus ends the Nano Dimension saga.
Via Nano Dimension
