A brand new year but straight back to an old story. Nano Dimension, which is currently the largest single shareholder in Stratasys, made a fresh bid right before Christmas to acquire Stratasys, offering to pay $16.50 in cash per share for all of the outstanding Stratasys shares that it does not own.
Just to recap, Nano Dimension made several increasingly aggressive attempts to buy Stratasys last year, all of which were rejected until eventually Nano Dimension gave up. Stratasys itself attempted to merge with Desktop Metal until its shareholders rejected this. At the same time, 3D Systems attempted to buy Stratasys but couldn’t quite close the deal. Instead, Stratasys opted to explore strategic alternatives for its future.
Nano Dimension opted to make this renewed offer through a press release, the tone of which suggests that it is slightly miffed that Stratasys did not conclude from its strategic review that Nano Dimension was its obvious suitor. Nonetheless, it points out that this new bid represents a 40% premium from the volume-weighted average Stratasys share price since Stratasys announced its strategic review on September 28, 2023. And to really seal the deal Nano Dimension even says that it can increase the price depending on due diligence.
For its part, Stratasys has acknowledged this new bid, adding: “There can be no assurance that the Company’s strategic review process will result in any transaction or other strategic outcome.” So, not exactly a warm welcome.
It’s worth noting that immediately before Nano Dimension making its new bid, Stratasys had renewed its poison pill Rights Plan, which is designed to force potential bidders to negotiate with the board of directors rather than appealing directly to shareholders.
In the meantime, Nano Dimension has just issued a preliminary statement on its figures for the full year ended 31 December 2023. This is mostly made up of estimates and we won’t get final figures until the end of March so it’s more of a marketing statement than a proper financial report. Thus the company states that it is expecting revenues of approximately $56.2 million, with the final results likely to show a 29% increase in revenues for the full year.
However, it’s worth noting that Nano Dimension typically has very high costs so the 2022 year saw revenues of $43.6 million, which translated into a loss of $228.3 million. For the first nine months of 2023, Nano Dimension reported revenues of $41.9 million, up 33% year on year, but with a net loss of $54.3 million.
Three months ago the company adopted a cost-cutting strategy, called Reshaping Nano Initiative, or RNI. This is planned to deliver a positive operating income in early 2025, reduce cash burn by 75-85 percent compared with 2023 and achieve a positive cash flow in 2025. Nano Dimension claims that its recent mergers and acquisitions spree, which includes snapping up GIS, has given it the scale to achieve this. As a result, its revenues have risen from $3.4 million in 2020 to $56.2M million this year.
However, the RNI also included cutting the workforce by 25% and the executive management group by 25% in the last quarter. The company says that the first quarter of 2024 should also include some of the $30 million cost savings.
In the meantime, the company is still sitting on $800 million of cash that it raised on the stock market to fund further acquisitions. It remains to be seen if the latest offer is enough to tempt the Stratasys board.
You can find further details from nano-di.com and stratasys.com.
First published on 4th January 2024 in the Printing and Manufacturing Journal. www.nessancleary.co.uk
