Here's What Happened At Jefferies' 3D Printing Summit

Jefferies 3D Printing Summit revealed continued strength in overall demand for metal 3D printing, with visibility limited for plastic focused 3D printing companies.

Jefferies’ Jason North mentioned that the offerings of Carbon 3D are fairly impressive and could disrupt the SLA and SLS businesses of 3D Systems Corporation (NYSE: DDD) [Rated: Hold] and the FDM business of Stratasys, Ltd. (NASDAQ: SSYS) [Rated: Buy].

Stratasys And 3D Printing Expecting Flat Demand

Presentations by Stratasys and 3D Printing projected demand to be flat and volatile in 2016, with limited visibility.

“SSYS thinks they may have seen the bottom but it's too soon to be sure due to the lack of visibility. In addition to both companies hoping for abating macro headwinds, DDD is counting on better reseller training and fixing its product quality issues to return to growth while SSYS is looking to its verticalization efforts,” analyst Jason North wrote.

Stratasys’ verticalization effort involving 50 people is expected to generate some revenue in 2016 and a further ramp up in 2017. North pointed out that both Stratasys and 3D Printing are looking to drive revenue growth through M&A and none of them are expecting any impact from the HP Inc (NYSE: HPQ) product to be launched later this year.

ExOne

North mentioned that ExOne Co (NYSE: XONE) [Rated: Hold] is likely to receive production orders from a European auto company for its Exerial printer. He added, however, that this is unlikely before 2018. The company expects its non-machine business to slow in 2016.

Materialise NV
 

Materialize NV (ADR) (NASDAQ: MTLS) expects software demand to remain strong with a mix shift towards recurring software revenues to provide additional visibility to their business.