3D printing stocks, Q3 2024: Nano goes shopping while another name falls off the board
The third quarter of 2024 is where the sector’s two forces, consolidation and collapse, happened at the same time and to different companies.
On 3 July, Nano Dimension agreed to buy Desktop Metal in an all-cash deal at 5.50 dollars a share, with terms that allowed the price to be adjusted down toward 4.07, valuing the target in the rough region of 180 million dollars. This was the same Desktop Metal that Stratasys shareholders had refused to touch a year earlier. A weaker company, a lower price, a buyer with cash: the consolidation the 2023 combatants could not agree on was now happening on the terms of whoever still had money.
Nano was not done. On 25 September it agreed to buy Markforged as well, at 5.00 dollars a share, around 115 million dollars. Two acquisitions in one quarter, both of formerly high-flying SPAC names, both bought for a fraction of their listing valuations.
While Nano was buying, Velo3D was being pushed out. Having fallen below the NYSE’s minimum market-cap standard, it was delisted and began trading on the OTCQX market as VLDX on 11 September. It kept operating, but the move from a major exchange to over-the-counter is usually a signal that the equity story, as public investors understood it, is over.
The strange part is what was happening inside the acquirer at the same time. Nano was committing hundreds of millions to acquisitions while its own board was under open activist attack. That contradiction broke in Q4, when the leadership doing the buying was removed. The quarter before is Q2 2024; live prices are on our stocks page.
Sources
- Nano Dimension. Nano Dimension to Acquire Desktop Metal.
- Business Wire. Nano Dimension to Acquire Desktop Metal, Creating a Leader in Additive Manufacturing.
- TipRanks. Velo3D Shifts to OTCQX Market Post-NYSE Delisting Procedures.
- 3DPrint.com. 3D Printing Financials: Markforged Q3 Numbers Amid Nano Dimension Buyout.