Q1 2025 3D Systems Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Mick McCloskey; Vice President-Treasury & Investor Relations; 3D Systems Corp.

Jeffrey Graves; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; 3D Systems Corp.

Jeffrey Creech; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, Principal Accounting Officer; 3D Systems Corp.

Troy Jensen; Analyst; Cantor Fitzgerald

Greg Palm; Analyst; Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Brian Drab; Analyst; William Blair & Co.

Alek Valero; Analyst; Loop Capital

Presentation

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to 3D Systems first-quarter 2025 earnings call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mick McCloskey, VP- Treasurer and Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Mick McCloskey

Hello and welcome to 3D Systems first-quarter 2025 conference call. With me on today's call are Dr. Jeffrey Graves, President and CEO; and Jeff Creech, EVP and CFO.
The webcast portion of this call contains a slide presentation that we will refer to during the call. Those following along on the phone who wish to access the slide portion of this presentation may do so on the investor relations section of our website.
The following discussion and responses to your questions reflect management's views as of today only and will include forward-looking statements as described on this slide. Actual results may differ materially. Additional information about factors that could potentially impact our financial results is included in our latest press release and our filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.
During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. In our press release and slides accompanying this webcast, you will find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations with comparable GAAP measures. Finally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons in this call will be against the results for the comparable periods of 2024.
With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Jeff Graves, for opening remarks.

Jeffrey Graves

Thank you, Mick. And good morning, everyone. As usual, I'll provide some opening comments on our current operating environment, our key initiatives and priorities, and then end with a few highlights of areas I think are important to investors for the future. I'll then hand off to our CFO, Jeff Creech, to provide details on the quarter's financial results. We'll then open up the call for Q&A.
So with that, let's move to slide 5. Let me start by putting the current market dynamics in perspective. Our 3D printing industry broadly is pioneering a new compelling method of manufacturing products that will take its place over time alongside traditional methods such as injection molding of polymers and casting of metals in factories around the world. This trend is exciting and it's unstoppable.
These 3D printing technologies bring unique benefits to customers in terms of performance, cost, and dramatically shortened lead times. They also provide an effective means of reducing supply chain disruption risks as the world experienced during COVID, or even as we are going through now with the tariff landscape shifting dramatically and often on a daily basis, just look at the last 36 hours.
As such, each year, 3D printing is earning its way into factories around the world. So if this trend is so prevalent, the obvious question is why are sales weak? Well, the simple answer is that capital spending by customers across most markets is virtually frozen due in large part to the uncertainty around tariffs. Speaking specifically for our customer base, with the exception of personalized healthcare, defense, and AI infrastructure to some extent, virtually, all others are waiting to see what the future demand looks like and where they will need new capacity to meet this demand cost-effectively. It's that simple. And until the situation becomes clear, I believe CapEx investments will remain somewhat anemic. So that means our sales will be impacted for some unknown period of time and consequently that we'll need to prioritize cost reduction efforts as long as this environment persists.
To be very transparent, at 3D systems, we've resisted this pressure to some extent in order to complete our three-year journey to refresh our entire polymer and metal product lines and bring what I believe are industry leading printing solutions to market. This is a journey we started in 2022, and we've seen it through.
Over this period, our R&D investment has been held at just over 20% of revenue, reflecting the breadth of our technology portfolio, whereas our competitors that are similar in size are well below this level and declining. This sustained focus in our development programs, combined with the insourcing of our manufacturing operations, which is now virtually complete, is a much different path than others in our industry have taken. And I believe the benefits of it will be clear in the years ahead as the market ultimately rebounds.
Our technology refresh has been dramatic in scope in that it has spanned all five of our major polymer printing platforms and very importantly, our metal printing platform, which was at a critical crossroads just a few years ago. While many companies would have, and many did, bail out on metal printing at that point, given the competitive landscape and the growing threat from the Chinese, 3D Systems did not. And because we didn't, I can proudly say that our Generation 2 metal printing systems, which are just now entering the commercialization phase, offer an outstanding combination of performance, reliability, and cost that rivals any platform on the market today. Our focus for these metal systems is on markets that are most demanding, such as aerospace and defense and oil and gas, in addition to applications throughout the human body.
Through these efforts, we positioned ourselves to not only sell great printing systems, but to provide the industry's best application support as well as the capability to produce limited quantities of parts for customers until they install their own printers or move to a contract manufacturer. It is this combination of capabilities spanning process development to full production that is unique to our company. We provide these capabilities for mature facilities in the United States, in Europe, and now via our joint venture in Saudi Arabia, which you'll hear much more about in the future. It's a business model that we've successfully executed for years in our healthcare business in areas such as titanium spinal implants, and we're now expanding into specific high-reliability industrial markets.
So while it's always great to discuss our market-leading photopolymer printing systems because they're truly fantastic, I believe it's absolutely essential for a company in our industry to offer both polymer and metal printing solutions. This is needed in order to ultimately obtain the scale that's required to service key customers around the world as their production demands grow. Those companies that do not have this capability will ultimately need to develop it or acquire it in order to be successful. This is why I would not trade our position in this industry for any others today, even in the face of a challenging end market.
So with these investments behind us and our insourcing near complete, it's time to focus on cost in this period of economic turbulence. Last quarter, we announced a new initiative to reduce our annualized costs by over $50 million over a six-quarter period. This involved primarily a consolidation of our operating footprint and a streamlining of our back office operations.
With ongoing sales pressures, however, we will now take the added step of aligning our overall organizational structure with the demand profile we experienced in the first quarter. While we certainly hope that this market condition is short-lived, but as the tariff situation is yet unresolved, it's prudent to assume that it will continue and to adjust our costs accordingly. These incremental cost actions, which will be completed over the next two months, will yield roughly $20 million of cost savings in the current year. Again, this is incremental to the $50 million of savings that is on track for completion by mid-2026, thus providing at least $70 million of cost savings in total.
From a timing standpoint, our priority is to get to a positive EBITDA situation as quickly as possible and then moving to positive operating and free cash flow performance. We believe this is highly attainable at the current sales levels once these programs are completed.
With that introduction, let me move to a brief update on our key growth initiatives. One of the most exciting markets now opening before us is dentistry, and I've spoken to you about this on several calls. When we last spoke, we identified $1 billion of total addressable market opportunity in the United States alone, with Europe and Asia more than doubling this number. We divide this market into four parts: Straighten, protect, repair, and replace.
The dental repair market, which we've not spoken a great deal about, has been foundational to us for many years and one in which we have a leading brand in NextDent materials. These materials are FDA and CEA approved for sale in all major markets, and they had a record sales performance in the fourth quarter of last year. While the first quarter was slightly softer, the trend is upward. And we expect it will continue, particularly as patient tooth repairs are typically not optional.
In addition to our NextDent materials for the repair of teeth, a significant contributor today to our dental business relates to the straighten market, namely aligners, an application that's been central to our success for decades. And with last year's announced signing of the largest contract in our company's 40-year history, it will remain foundational to our dental business going forward.
However, of note, due to the very concentrated nature of this customer base, we can expect more pronounced volatility in the straighten segment as the key manufacturer of these products periodically adjust their inventory levels and migrates over time to just in time material sourcing strategies to reduce overall inventory exposure. This will lead to some degree in quarter-to-quarter volatility in demand as it did in Q1. But overall, this business remains on a solid growth curve as people around the world increase their use of aligners for teeth straightening.
And finally, as I've described before, an important and exciting milestone rapidly approaching for our dental business, and that's the launch of our new NextDent 300 jetting system designed specifically for the printing of monolithic dentures. Having gained FDA approval for the dentures several months ago, the launch of the full printing platform is on schedule for full release this summer. It's already in beta testing and customer feedback is very positive. This will give us full capability to address the U.S. dental market, which is estimated to be over $400 million that's several times the size of the aligner market. European certification is expected to follow next year, which will significantly add to this market size.
Now let's turn to some additional growth drivers in areas of strategic focus for the future. Our growth in hardware systems and service revenues in this challenging economic climate provides important early feedback on our long-term growth strategy. As we've navigated through a challenging sales environment in recent quarters, we've continued to see demand for new customer application development and specialty parts manufacturing to increase.
With respect to industrial companies, we view our Application Innovation Group or AIG as a unique enabler that allows us to aggressively address this growing customer need. In the first quarter, the effectiveness of our AIG group was demonstrated most tangibly through the double-digit revenue growth of our metal printing platforms that they enabled, even in the face of a soft CapEx spending environment. Metal parts that are of greatest interest to our customers are typically highly complex in their design and are commonly comprised of special metal alloys for use in high-temperature, corrosive, high-stress environments, which makes them expensive.
Our application engineers work with customers through the entire design and work flow optimization process, printing test parts for validation, and in some cases, manufacturing initial production volumes as a bridge to the ultimate purchase of metal printers, software, and supporting services. This model is proving very effective for us and one that we'll expand upon in the future.
As an example of our technology advancement in metals that underpins this growth is the new DMP 350 Triple laser metal printing system which is now in full production. Over the last two years we've made significant strides in application capability and machine productivity in the 350, culminating in the system's ability to print the highest quality metal parts, having very low oxygen contamination. This capability, which was an outgrowth of our titanium printing requirements for human spinal implants, is attributable in part to the unique vacuum chamber design of the DMP Flex 350 printers. With this system, argon gas consumption is significantly reduced, which reduces operating costs, while yielding best-in-class oxygen levels, less than 25 parts per million, resulting in exceptionally strong high-quality high-purity parts.
In addition, we recently introduced a removable print module with a larger build volume, making the DMP the most compact system in this size category in the industry. The triple laser system, with its advanced optics, offers high energy input for greater throughput at a system cost that provides a compelling return on investment for our customers. Key markets for this system are defense and aerospace, as well as AI infrastructure applications with sales spanning the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
A similar story will soon unfold for our DMP 500 Gen 2 system, which is now in operation within our AIG group and is expected to enter full commercial production in the near future. With its larger print volume and greatly enhanced laser system, it will open an even greater range of applications in the higher reliability markets around the world.
Now turning to slide 7. Our personalized healthcare and medical parts manufacturing business are also key areas of strategic focus for our future. As discussed previously, we are increasing our focus in these critical areas of our portfolio, and I'm pleased to share the medical parts manufacturing and personalized healthcare grew revenues 18% and 17%, respectively, in the quarter in a year-over-year comparison.
Led once again by our AIG expertise, we partner closely with leading medical device manufacturers, collaborating with them from concept to commercialization of 3D printed implants and instruments within a variety of surgical specialties. Based on the growing demand we see ahead, we've increased our ability to scale this business, unlocking double-digit momentum for our FDA- and CE-approved medical implants and surgical aids manufactured in our ISO 13485-certified factories in the U.S. and Europe.
In our personalized healthcare business, we tailor specific patient-specific solutions, partnering with manufacturers and healthcare providers to transform surgical outcomes for both patients and surgeons. Our multi-faceted offerings include advanced design and planning software, creating custom solutions that help translate virtual surgery into the OR, improving outcomes and the overall patient experience. Our longstanding success in the cranio-maxillofacial or CMF space was on display again in April when we announced our solutions enablement of the world's first facial implant manufactured at point-of-care within the hospital in collaboration with the University Hospital at Basel.
We're now expanding our focus to address new areas of the human body and into new geographies, accelerants to our growth and the nearly 250,000 patients served through our personalized healthcare solutions business.
Before I turn things over to Jeff Creech to discuss our financials in more detail, I'd like to conclude my remarks on slide 8. Given the continuation of economic and geopolitical instabilities and the rapidly shifting tariff landscape which has so impacted our customer spending patterns, we decided to approach our outlook for the remainder of 2025 with a conservative view. This cautious approach, which we believe is prudent, considers the softer-than-expected start to the year given the pause we saw in our customers' CapEx spending since early in the year.
While we remain encouraged by the new printer and service sales growth during the first quarter, on balance, the year is off to a rough start, and we therefore need to take a more aggressive approach to reduce our cost structure. In order to do this, we'll now execute against two work streams, both focused on profitability improvements as I've described. The first is our previously announced cost actions which are on track to deliver over $50 million of annualized savings by the first half of next year. This is largely focused on footprint consolidation and back office efficiency improvements. In addition, we've decided to implement an incremental set of actions to deliver an additional $20 million of in-year savings for calendar '25. This effort will focus on resetting our organizational structure to align it with the demand environment that we currently face.
Our continuity in R&D investment over the last three years, combined with our insourcing and manufacturing and supply chain management, have given us a strong foundation to leverage as we now adjust our cost structure in the face of challenging market dynamics. We believe that these efforts will result in a structure and operating model that will deliver positive EBITDA performance and cash generation levels that are needed to sustain long-term investment in the future.
While I do not like having to pull our 2025 guidance at this point, given the current volatility stemming from the fluid tariff situation, I see no option but to do so. Hopefully, this will resolve itself in the near future. But until it does, we'll be very prudent in our planning and focus on our costs so that we can be profitable at our current revenue levels when these actions are completed.
Finally, on April 1, we announced the completed sale of our Geomagic asset portfolio. The transaction delivered over $100 million of net proceeds to our balance sheet, leaving us in a strong net cash position as we now address our cost structure. As we move forward, our execution of these restructuring plans, combined with our current cash reserves, enable greater flexibility, positioning our leading portfolio of assets to transform manufacturing for a better future.
And with that, I'll now turn things over to Jeff. Jeff?