Who’s The Biggest In 3D Printing, December 17, 2023

By on December 17th, 2023 in Corporate, news

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Who's The Biggest In 3D Printing
Which 3D print company is the biggest this week? [Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay]
Who's The Biggest In 3D Printing
Which 3D print company is the biggest this week? [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.

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

RANKCOMPANYCAPCHG
1Xometry1,358+242
2Protolabs975+7
3Stratasys873+32
43D Systems855+65
5Nano Dimension605-3
6Materialise382-5
7Desktop Metal238-3
8Markforged139-7
9Velo3D113-14
10FATHOM31-1
11Massivit30+2
12Titomic26+10
13Freemelt18+0
14AML3D15+2
15Steakholder Foods15-0
16Shapeways14-2
17voxeljet11-2
18Aurora Labs5-0
19Sygnis5-0
20Sigma Additive Solutions2-0
TOTAL5,712+325
3D printing valuation leaderboard (in US$M) [Source: Fabbaloo]

This week saw huge gains over the board. The markets in general were up two to three percent, and as usual, our 3D print leaderboard exaggerated the overall trends with a six point jump in value.

At the top of the leaderboard for a couple of week now remains Xometry. This week their valuation leapt upwards yet another 22%, a very significant gain. Their addition of US$242M in value exceeds the value of all companies in position eight or lower.

There was no official news driving this trend, but the company has posted several items demonstrating increased use of their platform. They also have a new board chair, appointed earlier this month, but it’s not a new person so that should not affect the valuation.

My thought is that investors are seeing value in the concept of manufacturing networks, with both Xometry and Protolabs at the top of the leaderboard. However, Shapeways remains in position 16 this week, while being in the same business. It may be that the Shapeways brand retains its long-past consumer focus among investors, and that might direct investors towards the others.

A continuing curiosity on the leaderboard is Titomic, which this week rose a massive 65% in value. This compounds an enormous 88% jump two weeks ago. That rise was so sudden that the Australian Stock Exchange formally requested an explanation, and “TTT” stated they were unaware of any cause for the sudden rise.

Now we have another huge jump, after a modest rise last week. What’s going on with Titomic? There was no news or additional formal enquiries this week, but instead the company issued 500,000 new shares (of almost 900M shares, something less than 1%). Why does the stock value jump 65%? If the company is the same, more shares should mean the stock price should dip slightly.

I can’t say what’s causing this sudden rise in Titomic’s value, but clearly something quite interesting is taking place. Whatever it is, it might be contagious: another Australian metal 3D company, AML3D, also boosted significantly this week.

Finally, let’s look at the two big hitters that have been battling all year: Stratasys and 3D Systems. As of this week, Stratasys remains ahead, but only by an ever-slimming margin. This week the two were separated by only US$18M in value; 3D Systems is catching up.

Upcoming Changes

BigRep announced plans to go public via the SPAC approach, so we will soon see them appear on the leaderboard.

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.

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!

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