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 | Bright Laser | $2,111 | -108 |
| 2 | Farsoon | $1,886 | +63 |
| 3 | Xometry | $1,644 | +116 |
| 4 | Proto Labs | $904 | +10 |
| 5 | Stratasys | $751 | +12 |
| 6 | Materialise | $319 | -3 |
| 7 | Nano Dimension | $302 | -11 |
| 8 | Titomic | $257 | +4 |
| 9 | 3D Systems | $187 | -42 |
| 10 | AML3D | $52 | -0 |
| 11 | Aurora Labs | $12 | -1 |
| 12 | Sygnis | $10 | +6 |
| 13 | Massivit | $9 | +1 |
| 14 | Steakholder Foods | $8 | +0 |
| 15 | Freemelt | $7 | -1 |
| TOTAL | $8,459 | +47 |
This week saw modest declines on major indices, suggesting that the leaderboard would suffer a hit. That wasn’t quite the case, however, as the leaderboard total actually rose by half a percent. As usual, most companies were flat, but there were exceptions — on both positive and negative sides.
Xometry grew almost eight percent this week. While that may seem positive (and it is), the company’s valuation seems to be still recovering from a high hit in the first week of June. It’s fascinating to see how investors react to sudden movements: there is often oscillation up and down before a new level is found.
3D Systems dipped a whopping 18.5% this week, leaving the company’s valuation at a mere US$187M. That may sound like a big number, but this company had previously been valued at almost US$5B in 2021, a drop of 96%. If you go back to 2014, the company’s valuation somehow hit US$13B. Someone buying the stock back then would now have only 1.5% of their original investment remaining.
What’s going on with 3D Systems to cause this rather large drop in value? It is very likely due to the issuance of US$92M in convertible notes. These are essentially a loan from investors, with the ability to convert into stock later on. The catch here is that the use of this fresh money will mostly be to pay off previous convertible notes that were coming due. The new notes are also payable at a rate of 5.875% per year.
It’s likely that investors saw this development as a negative signal. If 3D Systems was not able to generate enough revenue to pay off the old notes, then how are they going to do so on some new ones? The company has been running the business at a loss for a very long time, and indeed their latest financials also report a quarterly loss of US$37M. You can’t keep losing quarter after quarter, as that requires the business to consume its cash reserves. If they run low, then new investment is required, and that could partly be a reason for the new notes.
Their valuation is now so low that in a good market they might be considered a takeover target. However, money is tight now so that’s likely not happening unless there is
One of the smaller companies on the leaderboard, Sygnis, jumped an enormous 136% in value this week. The company has been struggling and recently gave away its entire stake in Zmorph. What caused the leap in value? An announcement from the company said they have signed a deal with Power Technology P.S.A. to begin mass production of drones. The report said:
“As part of the project, the Parties assume the implementation of a fully automated production line with a capacity of 35-40 thousand units per month, with the possibility of scaling to produce up to more than 100,000 drones per month, jointly applying for funding for its implementation, as well as supporting the reindustrialization of the European defence industry through the development of supply chains for key components (e.g. high-speed engines, refining of rare earth materials).”
That venture should be funded, given the increasing interest in military funding by most Western governments, and therefore caused the huge leap in Sygnis’ value.
With the ongoing war between Iran and Israel, we should take a look at the Israel-based companies on the leaderboard to see if there are any effects. Massivit actually grew 15% this week, but I am unable to identify any reason for this shift. Stratasys was up slightly, while Nano Dimension was down 3.5%. It seems that there has been little effect on these companies. While there are definitely risks of catastrophic negative outcomes, there are also plenty of positive opportunities available to service military needs.
Upcoming Changes
We’ve heard very little about companies intending to become publicly traded recently. This is due to the ongoing lack of investor interest in the technology. The technology’s reputation has suffered immensely in the investment community because of multiple large-scale investment failures in the past few years.
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.
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