3D Systems Corp (DDD)

[Santa Barbara Broker]

3D is toast for years...

I bought the stock quite a while back in the high 30s and rode it into the 80s. Then I cried for a month or two after I sold it as it continued to soar into the 90s because I though I'd made a mistake. No mistake, just rational thought...when something is overvalued by $65 a share probably best to take profits and get out instead of chasing it till it's overvalued by $80 a share and poised to crash and burn.

DDD is a $15 stock. It's nice that all that forward looking gas is built into the price right now and it hasn't collapsed any further, but it's double (and maybe even triple) the value it should be and that's just the truth. I was convinced 12 months back everyone and their brother would have three of these in every house...one in the office, one in the garage, one in bathroom printing out dirt cheap tampons and tooth brushes 24 hours a day. Alas, it's just not to be. The American over-consumer looked at 3D printing and went 'why?'. And that is the prevailing opinion that will drive 3D print tech straight into an industrial application only. Use your common sense. Why would anyone want to pay the enormous cost of buying the raw materials to print your own auto parts when an industrial manufacturer somewhere can buy tons of the metal printing powders necessary at massive economy of scale and sell you that same part at a third of what you'd pay to print it in your garage? And sell you those parts without printer expense, printer maintenance or having to source bootlegged crap programming on the internet.

No one is going to buy out 3D at $30 because it would simply be easier to start a unique company, hire away some of the major pipeline techno-geeks, license the intellectual properties you need to fill a niche and go to it. The vast amount of capital generation around 3D printing hasn't even been discovered yet. Major league applications for this tech will be used after 2060 in space as we colonize the Moon and Mars...sent there to build habitat, machinery and tools from raw materials mined at the source. Here and now...nothing but a future manufacturing and medical wet dream still struggling to find a market 10 years ahead of itself....