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 | Xometry | 2,304 | +303 |
| 2 | 3D Systems | 1,616 | -27 |
| 3 | Stratasys | 1,306 | +74 |
| 4 | Protolabs | 1,277 | -13 |
| 5 | Desktop Metal | 1,054 | +299 |
| 6 | Velo3D | 1,002 | +320 |
| 7 | Nano Dimension | 922 | +41 |
| 8 | Materialise | 813 | +1 |
| 9 | FATHOM | 564 | +108 |
| 10 | Markforged | 541 | +43 |
| 11 | SLM Solutions | 287 | +3 |
| 12 | Massivit | 86 | +3 |
| 13 | Fast Radius | 59 | +15 |
| 14 | Shapeways | 46 | +4 |
| 15 | Steakholder Foods | 45 | +4 |
| 16 | voxeljet | 41 | +12 |
| 17 | Freemelt | 41 | +0 |
| 18 | AML3D | 18 | +6 |
| 19 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 11 | 0 |
| 20 | Sygnis | 11 | +0 |
| 21 | Aurora Labs | 5 | +1 |
| 22 | Tinkerine | 2 | +0 |
| TOTAL | 12,051 | +1197 |
This week saw massive gains by multiple companies, as the markets in general soared. The markets overall leapt around two percent, but as is customary, the 3D print companies exaggerated that trend, and boy, did they ever.
Usually I select the winner of the week as the company that has somehow managed to grow their valuation the most. However, this week it’s hard to pick one because eight companies managed double-digit percentage growths, and TWO companies exceeded 40% growth in valuation over the week!
Topping the list was Velo3D, a company whose valuation has been unfairly depressed for months. Only in the past few weeks have investors seemed have caught on to the company’s incredible products and growth potential. This week their valuation grew an astonishing 47%, adding over US$300M in value. I’m pretty certain there are some very happy Velo3D investors on the loose. This has moved Velo3D to sixth place on the leaderboard.
AML3D continued their growth streak, driven by announcements related to their potential business in the aerospace industry. They grew almost as much, gaining 45% over the week. Like Velo3D, it seems that investors take a while to take notice of such announcements.
Desktop Metal gained just under 40% in value this week, certainly due to stellar financial results announced this week. Apparently, “DM” doubled their revenue in the quarter over last year, while increasing margin. Combined with the announcement of an expense management program, this should power even greater results in the future. This program should consolidate the many corporate acquisitions the company has made over the past year, and drive expenses downward — and profits upward.
voxeljet gained almost 40% in value as well. This company has had a depressed valuation for some time, and has tripled in value over the last month. However, the stock price is still far below its highs from a year ago, and has a long way to go for full recovery. This week the company announced an interesting lease buyback, in which they sold a building and leased it back for long term use. This freed up some capital, which no doubt influenced the company’s rise this week.
Aurora Labs, the Australian developer of a high-volume metal 3D printing process, saw a big rise of over 27%, likely from their similarity to AML3D and Velo3D.
In all, this just might have been the best week of results since we launched the leaderboard, with the total gaining eleven percent overall.
Finally, an administrative note: MeaTech 3D has changed their company name to Steakholder Foods. This is a rebranding exercise, as they will continue developing their 3D printed meat technology.
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.
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.
