By William Warby (originally posted to Flickr as Mini Eggs), via Wikimedia Commons
Easter eggs
It's Easter and the top three 3D printing market hens appear to be happy in their coops. But while one spent the week scratching about the farmyard, the other two have been laying potentially golden eggs.
There's been some big news this week, with a key report from Gartner buoying investor confidence in the industry, as it suggests 3D printing early adopters could be set to benefit in future as demand for such technology increases.
Singapore has also thrown its hat in the ring, injecting a cool $500 million into developing the technology, while London is to become the home of the world's largest 3D printing store when iMakr opens its Farringdon outlet in the coming weeks.
All exciting stuff, but how have our big three favourites fared as big stories about the industry have been breaking like so many foil-covered chocolate shells?
3D Systems' bazaar new business venture
3D Systems (NASDAQ: DDD) is continuing in its quest for world domination as the company has announced a new partnership spreading its reach wider into the international 3D printing community.
At the end of last week, the manufacturer of 3D printers revealed that it is joining forces with Turkish jewellery solutions firm Al-mera in Istanbul, the Motley Fool reports.
Al-mera plans to resell 3D ProJect 3510 CPX and CPXPlus 3D printers to jewellers who will then use them to create jewellery casts with "superior surface quality, extreme fine detail and exceptional precision".
The details of the deal's financials have not been revealed, nor has the volume of printers 3D Systems expects to sell via Al-mera.
Even so, the news of this expansion into Eurasia boosted 3D Systems' share price.
In the opening trading session in New York today (March 28th), 3D Systems saw its share price rally by 3.3 per cent to $31.63 per unit, marking the end of the plateau that the stock has endured throughout the week.
Machine demand boosts ExOne
Some people celebrate Easter with chocolate eggs, but ExOne (NASDAQ: XONE) has marked the holiday with financial results. Some may not consider a quarterly report to be particularly festive - but they would be wrong in ExOne's case.
The organisation revealed improved revenue for the final quarter of 2012 of $12.7 million, while net income rose to $0.9 million. For the full year, ExOne reported a revenue rise of 87.6 per cent to $28.7 million and a hike in machine sales for the final quarter to $8.9 million.
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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.
Demand for machines is to thank for these eggshell-ent figures, as the company revealed that in the entire year it sold 13 machines - eight of which were sold in the final quarter alone. This is compared with the single machine sold in the October-December period the previous year.
As a result, this good news was reflected in the stock market, with ExOne shares soaring by more than nine per cent to $33.38 per unit this afternoon.
Cruising on the 3D printing wave
The week's positive 3D printing news has contributed to the appreciation of industry stocks across the board and even though the company had little in way of stock-shaking news to report, Stratasys (NASDAQ: SSYS) has still benefitted from the upbeat investor attitude.
Stratasys has been more or less flat all week, but looks to close in time for Easter on an uptick, as it rallied by 1.1 per cent to $74.37 per unit in the morning trading session for the Nasdaq.
That's it for this week and all of us at TCT hope you have a relaxing Easter break. Also, a big thanks to everybody who has engaged in the Massive Dynamics discussion, we've been reading everybody's comments with interest so please check the feature out and let us know what you think if you haven't already.
