Who’s The Biggest In 3D Printing, October 29, 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	Stratasys	708	-92
2	Xometry	675	-86
3	Nano Dimension	656	-51
4	Protolabs	608	-46
5	3D Systems	476	-118
6	Materialise	315	+15
7	Desktop Metal	283	-88
8	Velo3D	242	-53
9	Markforged	128	-81
10	Massivit	26	-4
11	FATHOM	21	-1
12	Steakholder Foods	16	-0
13	Freemelt	16	+2
14	Shapeways	14	-1
15	AML3D	12	+2
16	voxeljet	11	-1
17	Titomic	6	-0
18	Sygnis	5	+1
19	Aurora Labs	4	+0
20	Sigma Additive Solutions	2	-1
	TOTAL	4,223	-603

This week was among the worst we’ve ever recorded since launching the leaderboard. The total value of the companies being tracked fell an astonishingly 12.5% this week. To put that in perspective, it would take only eight weeks to get to zero.

There were a number of reasons for this, and one of them was the markets overall, which fell between 2-3 percent this week. The 3D companies tend to exaggerate larger trends, and oh boy, they did this week.

The other reason for the precipitous drop in the leaderboard total was due to a few specific companies that suffered huge dips, bringing the total down with them.

At the top of the leaderboard we still have Stratasys, which has been neck-and-neck with Xometry during the week. At points Xometry was slightly ahead, but we measure things at the Friday close.

The most notable loss this week was no doubt Markforged, which fell a catastrophic 39% in value. This drop came after the company hinted it would not reach its financial goals this quarter. Of course, the company’s stock price is largely based on expectations, and when you change them, the stock price changes accordingly.

Desktop Metal lost almost 24% in value this week, and there may be two reasons for this. First, the company’s agreement to merge with Stratasys was abruptly cancelled by Stratasys shareholders, leaving the company with some unknowns for the future. Unknowns are generally not seen positively by investors, who are looking for predictability.

Secondly, the company suddenly sold off Aerosint to Schaeffler Group, after acquiring them only two years ago. While this may or may not be a technically strategic move, it could be that investors see a company selling assets after a failed merger. Those two factors may have something to do with the valuation dip this week.

3D Systems, for a long time the top dog on the leaderboard, continues its downward fall. This week the company fell another 20% in value. Earlier this year 3D Systems attempted to purchase Stratasys. However, over the past eight months we’ve seen the tables turn and now Stratasys is valued at 50% higher than 3D Systems. The problem was likely compounded this week by 3D Systems’ announcement that they are implementing a significant restructuring program intended on saving something close to US$50M per year. While that move will surely boost profits, it can also be seen as a negative signal by some investors.

One more thing. The leaderboard total this week is US$4.2B, among the lowest we’ve seen. That’s quite incredible because only two years ago 3D Systems alone was valued at US$4B by the market.

Times have certainly changed.

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.