3D Systems Cuts Full-Year Forecast; 3rd Quarter Expected to Lag

3D Systems cuts its year-long economic forecast short after 3rd quarter projections fail to meet expectation.

3D Systems has announced that it anticipates its third quarter revenue to be in the range of $164 million to $169 million and a sequentially growing order book of $42 million. The company expects to report GAAP earnings per share in the range of $0.01 to $0.03 and non-GAAP EPS in the range of $0.16 to $0.19. These are preliminary results based on current expectations and are subject to quarter-end closing adjustments, actual results may differ.

Strengthening sales of the company’s design, manufacturing and healthcare products and services were not enough to overcome the revenue shortfall from the continued manufacturing capacity constraints for its direct metals printers and delayed availability of its newest consumer products.

“We are disappointed that we failed to fully capitalize on the robust demand for our direct metal and consumer products during the quarter,” said Avi Reichental, President and Chief Executive Officer, 3DS. “While we worked very hard to deliver these products sooner, achieving manufacturing scale, quality and user experience targets took significantly longer than we had anticipated.”

At the end of the third quarter, the company brought online a second direct metal 3D printers’ manufacturing line and began commercial shipments of its latest consumer printers.

“Now that we have closed these availability gaps, we expect our revenue growth rate to increase,” continued Reichental.

The company expects to report that its materials’ gross profit margins rebounded for the quarter and its Quickparts’ gross profit margin expanded sequentially, despite greater drag from concentrated service bureau acquisitions in the quarter. Notwithstanding these gains, the company expects its consolidated gross profit margin for the quarter to remain sequentially flat as a result of the current sales volume and mix and the residual costs of manufacturing start up and ramp.

“Our accelerated investments in new products and acquisitions contributed to a record order book in every period of this year, but disrupted revenue generation and pressured our gross profit margins. Now that we are shifting our attention to fine-tuning these investments, we expect to leverage them into a valuable and sustainable first-mover advantage,” stated Reichental.

Factoring in its third quarter revenue shortfall and outlook for the remainder of the year, management trimmed its previous guidance for the full year 2014. Management now expects revenue in the range of $650 million to $690 million, and GAAP earnings per share of $0.18 to $0.28 and non-GAAP earnings per share in the range of $0.70 to $0.80.

“The same decisive actions that pressured our short term performance also delivered a much stronger portfolio of self-developed and acquired products and services. In the aggregate, we believe this positions us well to achieve our long-term targets,” concluded Reichental.

Source: 3DSystems