SSYS $63.88 and DDD $37.79 at the close.
Both considerably below their 52-week and all-time highs.
With Friday's 5.46% gain for Stratasys and 3.39% for 3D Systems followed by 1.89% and 3.74% moves today, I think my work here is done.
Time to sell out to the Young Turks, shut down the blog and buy the island I've been promising myself.
Here are a couple of today's headlines:
Investors Business Daily- 3D Printer Market Rising To Near $5 Billion By 2017
Insider Monkey- Move Over Apple Inc (AAPL) and Facebook Inc (FB), 3D Systems May Be This Decade’s Top Dog
And the Friday post that gave us the headline, from The Motley Fool:
It's Official! 3D Printing is Going Mainstream!
Or so says CNN. In this video, CNN highlights another way 3D printing is expanding its presence in our everyday lives. It's a nice video, but it doesn't do justice to this technology. For example:
General Electric (NYSE: GE) currently produces jet engine turbine blades with 3D printing and saves an estimated $25,000 per engine. If GE builds its estimated 5850 jet engines in 2012, it will save over $146 million on this one part for this one product alone.
SelectTech Geospatial developed and built a fully functional drone aircraft with 3D printing in two weeks (instead of six) at a cost of $5,000 (instead of $30,000).
Popular Mechanics designated 3D printing as a Top Ten Tech Breakthrough for 2012. If you’re a DIY’er, here’s a link to help you get started with 3D printing.
Headbobble.com will custom build a bobblehead doll in your likeness with color 3D printing (If that’s not a life changing high tech development, I don’t know what is).
3D printing is already mainstream and growing. So how do you get in on the action?
Well, Formlabs and Makerbot, the companies featured in the video, are not publicly traded. Bummer.
Two companies that are include 3D Systems (NYSE: DDD) and Stratasys (NASDAQ: SSYS). They build the printers, develop the materials and write the software for both commercial and personal use. Both are considered leaders in the 3D printing industry. Both are similar in size (DDD is $2 billion market cap, SSYS is $1.3 billion) and valuation (the PE for DDD is 62, SSYS is 70). Both are coming off recent declines in their stock prices of about 20%. No question both companies bear the burden of high expectations for steadily improving earnings and game changing technology. I think they both are up to the challenge....MORE
