3D printing stocks, Q2 2024: the fight for Nano Dimension goes public
The second quarter of 2024 was about one company’s internal fight, and it matters because that company was about to reshape the sector.
Nano Dimension was the odd one out in 3D printing: while peers ran low on cash, it sat on a large pile raised in better years. The argument was over what to do with it. The activist investor Murchinson, which had been pressing the company since 2023, escalated in the quarter with an open letter to fellow shareholders on 28 June attacking chief executive Yoav Stern and the board over what it called questionable actions. Murchinson’s case was straightforward: return the cash or spend it well, and change the leadership that had resisted doing either.
The board’s answer, which arrived the following quarter, was to spend the cash on acquisitions rather than hand it back. So Q2 set up a genuine conflict of direction. The largest shareholder of activist weight wanted control and discipline; management wanted to go shopping. Both things then happened at once, which is the mess we cover in Q3 and Q4.
Elsewhere the quarter was thin on hard events, the usual slow bleed of earnings for the smaller names rather than anything that closed. Current prices are on our stocks page.