I have heard several hints in the past few weeks from various people in
the RP industry that business may have not grown in 1997 at the rate it had
in previous years. I guess we'll all wait to see what kinds of number
Terry Wohlers and his associates came up with.
The reasons for the bad numbers are not clear to me, however. Are the
vendors of RP equipment, materials, and services so dependent upon the Asian
market for new sales that an economic setback there has caused investors
to devalue the stocks of RP vendors? Did the RP vendors promise great sales
figures based on the Asian market and have those sales recently fallen
through, which has led to a lack of confidence in the companies?
Perhaps the RP companies made promises of great sales that have fallen
through for other reasons? For instance, have customers and prospects cut
back on new product development in general? Have they gotten more efficient
at new product development, such that they are approving fewer new
projects, with higher market success rates, but using fewer prototypes? Are they
switching to other prototyping technologies, reducing the amount of
physical prototyping? Are they disappointed that improvements in RP technology
have not occured as quickly as they want?
Have the stocks of RP vendors declined in lock step? In other words, are
the stocks declining for the same reasons or is it possible they are
declining for different reasons in each case?
Actually, none of the stocks are at the 52-week low. Are they on their
way back up? Were the 52-week highs due to early investor enthusiasm? In
other words, where are the current prices in relation to the mean and median
prices over the entire 52-week period? Maybe those stock prices are just
where they should be.
Thanks, Al, for giving me the opportunity to jump in and ask some
questions that have been bugging me.
Cheers,
Brock Hinzmann
KHVD07A wrote:
>
>
>I thought that the following table of HI, LO, and current stock prices
>for the publicly held RP companies might be of interest to those
>participating in this list. It looks like the finanacial problems in
>Asia have spread to this business.
>
>RP Stock Prices as of 1/16/98
>
> 52 week Hi 52 week Lo 10 AM on 1/16/98
> DTM $8.50 $1.00 $2.00
> Helisys $3.12 $0.25 $0.63
> Stratasys$25.75 $8.00 $9.19
> TDSC $16.25 $5.87 $6.75
>
>Regards,
>Al Hastbacka
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