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 | Protolabs | 918 | -22 |
| 2 | Stratasys | 853 | -21 |
| 3 | Xometry | 817 | -539 |
| 4 | Nano Dimension | 732 | +43 |
| 5 | 3D Systems | 564 | -91 |
| 6 | Materialise | 318 | -15 |
| 7 | Desktop Metal | 199 | +27 |
| 8 | Markforged | 131 | +10 |
| 9 | Velo3D | 65 | -1 |
| 10 | Massivit | 42 | 0 |
| 11 | FATHOM | 31 | +1 |
| 12 | Freemelt | 21 | -1 |
| 13 | Titomic | 20 | +4 |
| 14 | Steakholder Foods | 17 | -1 |
| 15 | Shapeways | 13 | +1 |
| 16 | AML3D | 11 | -1 |
| 17 | voxeljet | 10 | +0 |
| 18 | Aurora Labs | 5 | +1 |
| 19 | Sygnis | 5 | -0 |
| 20 | Sigma Additive Solutions | 3 | -0 |
| TOTAL | 4,773 | -605 |
This week saw enormous losses from several companies on the leaderboard, with the board in total dropping a whopping 11.25%. This is extremely surprising because the NASDAQ rose almost two percent this week, and 3D print companies tend to exaggerate those trends. This continues to hint at the disconnect between 3D print companies and investors.
It turned out that a majority of the leaderboard losses were due to a single company.
Xometry, the position one holder for many weeks, dropped an incredible 40% in value this week. The drop occurred in a single day, February 29th. On that day, Xometry announced two things: their quarterly and 2022 financial results, and the installation of a new CFO.
One of the two caused the drop. The CFO replacement seems quite natural: the CFO that led the company to public markets is retiring, and being replaced by an experienced CFO from Yelp. While Yelp isn’t exactly a manufacturing company, CFOs require financial experience. I can’t see how this would have caused the drop.
I also can’t see how the financial results caused this drop either. Almost across the board, Xometry reported very significant increases in revenue, customers, and results. While they are still in the red, their losses were significantly chopped in the past quarter. With their substantial cash reserves it’s clear the company can operate for a decade or more at this rate.
Nevertheless, investors punished Xometry with crushing losses in value. This is not the first time it’s happened for this company. In 2022-23, the company’s stock price actually dropped 75%. This suggests that investors have treated Xometry in a fairly volatile manner over the few years it’s been traded.
Because of Xometry’s troubles, we have a new leader on the board: Protolabs.
Another company with a drop this week was 3D Systems, which had long held top position on the leaderboard. This week they announced their 2023 financials, and there were notable decreases in revenue, leading to significantly increased losses. This leaves them with a valuation this week of US$564M, leaving them with a widening US$168M gap between them and Nano Dimension, which grew six percent this week.
Perhaps Nano Dimension should consider buying 3D Systems rather than Stratasys?
Desktop Metal rose 15% this week, but without any official news. It may be that investors anticipate good financial results, or perhaps more buying as the company’s stock price dropped after the failed Stratasys merger.
Markforged rose eight percent, likely on similar reasoning, as they also have not released any official news, aside from the date of the next financial release. Investors may be expecting good things.
Finally, we have Titomic, the Australian metal 3D printing company that recently underwent a dramatic series of valuation jumps, followed by a few weeks of profit taking. This week they leapt upwards suddenly to the tune of 21%. Again, no news, so this could be pure speculation on the part of some investors.
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.
