Leaderboard: The Giants of 3D Printing as of December 31, 2023

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 commonly known, is of significant importance.

It might seem needless to keep track of these companies on a weekly basis, given that their true worth is only perceived when their stocks are sold. Nonetheless, corporations sometimes experience events that cause their value to oscillate, and we record these instances in this weekly post.

It’s worth noting that our list doesn’t include all the major players in the 3D printing field. Some enterprises, like EOS, are privately owned, hence their actual size can’t be accurately determined. Others, such as HP or Siemens, have substantial 3D printing subdivisions, but their integration into larger conglomerates means we can’t definitively ascertain the scale of their 3D printing operations.

Let’s shift our attention towards the 3D printing firms featured in this week’s list.

3D Printing Leaderboard

This week saw a great deal of news, considering it’s the end of the year and “things should be quiet”.

The leaderboard rose another healthy 2.5%, down from last week’s huge boost, but still pretty significant. However, this week’s overall gains were driven by two specific companies.

Xometry, ranking first on the leaderboard, witnessed an approx 4.5% increase this week, indicating that investors are regaining their trust in the manufacturing service. Earlier, there had been a dramatic decline in Xometry, however, it has been recuperating in the last few weeks, continuing the trend this week.

The second major player affecting the leaderboard total this week is Stratasys. Earlier this year, the firm had been the target of multiple acquisition proposals, none of which eventually came to fruition. Nevertheless, these instigated a surge in the company’s stock price.

A similar scenario is repeating with the unexpected recommencement of acquisition proposals from competitor Nano Dimension, known for its huge cash reserves and seeking an investment avenue, namely Stratasys. Similar to its experience earlier this year, Stratasys’ valuation jumped significantly. This week, the company witnessed a 9% increase, while competitor 3D Systems had a modest 2.5% rise. Meanwhile, acquisition expert Nano Dimension remained steady, indicating that investor confidence in the renewed proposal is rather lukewarm.

Markforged experienced a 14% increase this week, though there were no significant corporate announcements to stimulate the shift. It appears to be a slight recovery as the firm’s value had significantly declined in recent weeks leading to a notification from the stock exchange. This is likely to drive the company towards a reverse stock split. However, this week’s gains seem to be investors pursuing a promising deal, feeling the decline may have been too steep.

Titomic was a major player this week, featuring noticeable upward trends recently that were so extraordinary that the Australian stock market demanded an official clarification multiple times. This week, the upward trend continued with a 19% increase, putting Titomic ahead of Shapeways.

On the subject of Shapeways, they experienced a 16% jump this week. This spike is attributed to the company revealing plans for workforce cuts, or layoffs, amounting to 15% of their total employees. The projected annual savings of US$6.2 million from this workforce reduction is appealing to investors, but not so much to the staff who were let go.

Lastly, we have Velo3D, known as the most unpredictable 3D printer stock in any market. The company’s valuation has fluctuated wildly since becoming a publicly-traded entity just a few years ago. This week, the valuation took a massive 30% dip based on news that Benny Buller, the company’s CEO and founder, was stepping down and a search had commenced to find a suitable replacement.

While bringing in a new CEO suitable for a change in corporate strategy is one thing, it’s quite another to announce a CEO’s departure without a ready replacement. This unsettling revelation has led to a significant drop in the valuation by investors. Despite this, it’s worth noting that Velo3D offers one of the most revolutionary metal 3D printing technologies in the industry, and we can only hope they successfully navigate their way forward.

Upcoming Changes

BigRep has announced its plans to go public via the SPAC approach, indicating that we will soon see them appear on the leaderboard.

An interesting company to keep an eye on is ICON, a Texas-based construction 3D printer manufacturer. This private company has secured a substantial investment amounting to almost half a billion dollars. Given this level of funding, it is likely that talks about transitioning to public markets could take place, ranking them at or near the top of the leaderboard.

Another potential company to go public is VulcanForms, a company that offers manufacturing services using an advanced metal 3D printing process. Currently privately valued at over US$1B, going public could send that value 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.

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