ExOne & Materialise Report Steeper Losses Than Anticipated In Quarterly Earnings Reports

As usual, we are extremely busy during the 3D printing earning’s season. While over the last two weeks we saw both 3D Systems and Stratasys report, this week it’s Organovo, ExOne and Materialise’s turn. After last week’s reports sparked a bit of a rally among the 3D printing giants, this week is an important one for some of the smaller publicly traded companies within the space. While we already gave you the rundown on Organovo’s quarterly numbers earlier this morning, now it’s time to have a look at how ExOne and Materialise fared.

We will start with ExOne (XONE), who announced earnings at the close of the market yesterday. While analysts had been expecting a loss of $0.26 per share, the company disappointed with a loss of $0.48 per diluted share for the second quarter. Gross profit for the quarter was approximately $1.1 million, with a gross margin of 13%. This is down from a year ago when the company reported a $2.5 million gross profit on gross margins of 22.3%. The company’s operating loss rose to $6.9 million for the quarter from $4.7 million a year ago as SG&A expenses came in at $6.3 million. While the report was not particularly a positive one, the company expects the remainder of the year to show improvements.

“Given our sales outlook, we are encouraged by the operating leverage anticipated in the second half, which we believe will drive profitability,” explained S. Kent Rockwell, Chairman and CEO of ExOne. “It is always a lengthy process to initiate momentum in industrial markets. As it occurs, we anticipate a broad scale increase in market penetration by our products.”

The company is maintaining their guidance for the remainder of the year with the exception of their gross margin, which is now expected to fall between 30 to 34% instead of the initial estimate of 36 to 40%. Shares of ExOne are down nearly 5.5% in pre-market trading.

The Belgium-based company, Materialise (MTLS) has also reported their earnings just moments ago. While missing consensus estimates by $0.06, reporting a loss of $0.07 per share, the company did surprise to the up side with their quarterly revenue. While analysts had been expecting revenue to come in at approximately $24.04 million for the quarter, the company reported $27.7 million, which is a gain of $4.4 million over last quarter, and $1.42 million compared to the second quarter of 2014.

“The consistent and focused execution of our strategy has led to yet another quarter of steady growth,” stated Executive Chairman of Materilise, Peter Leys. “In this year’s second quarter, overall revenue increased by 28.8%, while organic growth reached 22.6%. We believe the compelling value proposition Materialise offers customers through our unique combination of software and printing services is clearly demonstrated by the significant revenue growth we generated in both 3D printing software and industrial production, of 44.8% and 30%, respectively.”

While the company is currently trading at a PE of 143, growth is certainly built in to any investor’s strategy. With revenues on the rise, the earnings miss may not be particularly damaging to the stock which was up 2.37% yesterday as investors anticipated today’s report.

This earnings season has not been particularly great for any of the 3D printing companies we have covered thus far, but it appears that much of the negativity in the sector has already been built into the share prices, which have been on the rise this week and last.

Are you an investor in either of these companies? Let us know your thoughts on either of these quarterly reports in the 3D Printing Stock forum thread on 3DPB.com