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 | Stratasys | 1,397 | +17 |
| 2 | 3D Systems | 1,200 | -121 |
| 3 | Xometry | 1,018 | -115 |
| 4 | Protolabs | 885 | -26 |
| 5 | Nano Dimension | 803 | +15 |
| 6 | SLM Solutions | 658 | -7 |
| 7 | Desktop Metal | 585 | -3 |
| 8 | Materialise | 504 | -18 |
| 9 | Velo3D | 433 | +12 |
| 10 | Markforged | 226 | -10 |
| 11 | FATHOM | 58 | +5 |
| 12 | Steakholder Foods | 45 | 0 |
| 13 | Massivit | 35 | -1 |
| 14 | Shapeways | 28 | -4 |
| 15 | Freemelt | 21 | -1 |
| 16 | voxeljet | 16 | -0 |
| 17 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 11 | 0 |
| 18 | AML3D | 10 | +2 |
| 19 | Sygnis | 8 | -1 |
| 20 | Titomic | 5 | +0 |
| 21 | Aurora Labs | 3 | -1 |
| TOTAL | 7,949 | -257 |
This week was a down week for the market in general, so it was expected that the companies on the leaderboard would follow the pattern. They did, and the leaderboard total dropped by three percent.
This week’s winner was Australia-based AML3D, which sold a metal 3D printing system to the US Navy Center of Excellence. The X-Edition 6700 is the largest machine available from AML3D, and will be located in the navy facility in Danville Virginia. This is the second order from this organization, strongly hinting that the US Navy has confidence in the company’s products.
That in turn led to investor confidence in the company, and caused the company’s valuation to rise a whopping 24% this week.
FATHOM rose a healthy twelve percent this week, continuing a recovery pattern that’s been ongoing for about a month now. The company had previously lost considerable value in the March period, but still has a long way to go to get back to where they were valued.
Shapeways took a dip of twelve percent, but my suspicion is that is the result of some short term profit taking. The company’s valuation has been pulverized over the past year, but has recently bumped up slightly. That might have been seen as an opportunity to sell.
Then we come to the four companies involved in the Stratasys merger situation at the top of the leaderboard: Stratasys, 3D Systems, Nano Dimension and Desktop Metal.
Stratasys, the recipient of repeated and increasing takeover bids, soared to the top of the leaderboard last week and remains in that position. In fact, they actually grew their valuation slightly in spite of the overall downward motion. As of this week, they are almost US$200M ahead of 3D Systems, the company attempting to purchase their shares.
3D Systems, on the other hand, saw their valuation drop by a whopping ten percent this week, most likely due to a combination of general market conditions and investor sentiment regarding the proposed Stratasys takeover. Could it be that their shareholders believe the current bid is too high?
You can see in this chart comparing Stratasys (blue) with 3D Systems (yellow), that 3D Systems has taken a hit during the period when they bid for Stratasys. Stratasys’ value has been gaining ever since the takeover war began.
Nano Dimension, the other bidder in this scenario, saw a rise in valuation of almost two percent this week. This is quite different from the market overall, so it likely has to do with the Stratasys situation. My suspicion is that with 3D Systems emerging as the leading candidate to win Stratasys, Nano Dimension investors are having more confidence in that company. Previously Nano Dimension shareholders were quite upset about the ongoing takeover proposals, and thought the cash could be spent in better ways.
Finally, there’s Desktop Metal, which had previously arranged a merger with Stratasys. That merger is now pending the results of the 3D Systems negotiations. If Stratasys gets a better offer, they won’t do the Desktop Metal merger, leaving that company on the sidelines. For the past several weeks Desktop Metal’s valuation has been pretty flat, and I suppose that their investors are simply waiting to see what happens.
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.
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.
