3D Systems Stock Issue Hints at New M&A Activity

3D Systems Corporation (NYSE:DDD) today announced that, at its annual meeting held today, its stockholders approved an amendment to its Certificate of Incorporation to increase the authorized number of shares of Common Stock from 120,000,000 to 220,000,000.

“We are grateful to our stockholders for their support,” said Avi Reichental, President and Chief Executive Officer, 3D Systems. “This increase in our authorized shares restores our flexibility to use newly issued shares of our common stock for appropriate corporate purposes.”

What could those corporate purposes be? Likely more M&A. Last year, 3D Systems acquired a number of companies, including:

• Bespoke Innovations in May 2012 for 3D printed personalized prosthetics
• FreshFiber in May 2012 for 3D printed electronics accessories
• My Robot Nation in April 2012 for creative solutions to support 3D printing community Cubify for kids and adults
• Paramount Industries in April 2012  to advance aerospace and medical device 3D printing

A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from November 26 to December 2.

Shares of leading 3D printing public companies are up over the last 3 months. 3D Systems (NYSE:DDD) is up 19%, Proto Labs (NYSE:PRLB) is up 12% and Stratasys (NASDAQ:SSYS) is up 2%. The combined market cap of those 3 companies is now over $5 billion.

Compare the performance of these 3D printing stocks (up 9.5%) to the slight decline of the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and NASAQ indices. Even though 3D printing is currently at the top of the “hype cycle“, it looks like investors are being rewarded for their early support of the industry.

In this video, Motley Fool analyst Blake Bos discusses some of the key recent events for 3D Systems and Stratasys:

• 3D Systems fought allegations over accounting irregularity
• 3D Systems sued Form Labs on patent infringement
• Stratasys released 16 new non-metal materials
• Stratasys announced a new Objet 3D printer

In the video below, Bloomberg Businessweek shares 3D printing trends, including key highlights:

• The rapid drop in prices for 3D printers is increasing adoption.
• Public company performance. For example, 3D Systems stock is up 200%.
• The potential “black swan” impact on Asia manufacturing.

The reporter draws an analogy to the early 1980s when personal computers started to become mainstream.

The key question: will 3D printers kill manufacturing growth in Asia? A UBS analyst believes 3D printing will tilt the economic advantage back toward the U.S. and other western countries.

Watch the full video below, or go to Bloomberg Businessweek:

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Shenzhen, China photo by mwiththeat used under Creative Commons license.