Who’s The Biggest In 3D Printing, November 5, 2023 « Fabbaloo

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	827	+219
2	Xometry	808	+133
3	Stratasys	778	+70
4	Nano Dimension	651	-5
5	3D Systems	585	+110
6	Materialise	336	+21
7	Desktop Metal	315	+31
8	Velo3D	266	+24
9	Markforged	150	+22
10	FATHOM	29	+8
11	Massivit	26	0
12	Freemelt	19	+3
13	Shapeways	15	+2
14	Steakholder Foods	15	-2
15	voxeljet	12	+1
16	AML3D	11	-1
17	Titomic	7	+1
18	Sygnis	6	+0
19	Aurora Labs	4	-0
20	Sigma Additive Solutions	3	+0
	TOTAL	4,859	+636

This week saw several near-unbelievable swings in valuation for companies on the leaderboard. The markets in general were up this week ranging from four to seven percent, and as expected the companies on the leaderboard tended to exaggerate that trend. In all, the leaderboard total jumped upwards a whopping 15.2%, among the highest we’ve seen since recording started.

The big winner of the week had to be Protolabs, which announced very significant financial results that exceeded expectations. That caused a run for the stock, and their valuation leapt upwards a massive 36%. That puts them in first place, leaving the others that have been battling for that spot to lesser ranks.

In second place we find Xometry, which for quite a while was in first place. They rose almost 20% this week, which is significant. What did they do to gain that raise? Nothing in particular, as they announce their financials next week. However, I suspect investors saw Protolabs positive results and extrapolated them to Xometry. If Xometry comes through with “only normal” results, investors may be disappointed.

FATHOM also rose 36% this week. The manufacturing service announced a change in CEO this week, which is likely driving the upward shift. It may be that investors believe a new strategy from new management may be profitable for the company.

What of 3D Systems and Stratays, the two rivals that have been in first place intermittently this year? 3D Systems rose a healthy 23% this week, likely due to investors realizing the company’s strategic restructuring will eventually be positive, after last week’s initially negative investor response. Meanwhile, Stratasys rose ten percent, and they remain 32% larger than 3D Systems.

Bucking the trend was Nano Dimension, which fell very slightly this week. Their valuation as been somewhat volatile, and I can’t help but think the ongoing conflict in Israel may have something to do with this.

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.