3D SYSTEMS CORP Q4 2025 earnings call

Hello, welcome to 3D Systems fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. With me on today's call are Dr. Jeffrey Graves, President and CEO, and Phyllis Nordstrom, Interim 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 and 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. Unless otherwise stated, all comparisons in this call will be against our results for the comparable periods of 2024. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Jeff Graves for opening remarks.

Thank you, Monica. Good morning, everyone. Having executed well on both our 2025 savings initiatives and new product launches, I'm pleased to report a stronger finish to 2025, with momentum continuing to build as we move into 2026. I'll start today by reviewing a few highlights from our 4th quarter and provide some comments on overall market conditions as we enter the new year. I'll focus very specifically on our strategy and key growth initiatives, the early stages of which you can see reflected even now in our operating trends. After this, I'll turn things over to our Interim CFO, Phyllis Nordstrom, to provide details on the quarter's financials. When Phyllis concludes, we'll open the call for Q&A. Let's turn to slide 5.

Despite global economic and geopolitical challenges that have translated to restraint in CapEx spending by our customers for some time now, we've been able to balance the need for significant cost reduction with the requirement for continuity in key R&D programs that are essential to long-term growth and value creation for our customers and shareholders alike. I'm extremely proud of our employees and their ability to execute this balance day-to-day over the last 2 years, and I'm pleased to see the results of their hard work and creativity now entering the market. These efforts are allowing us to refresh our installed base of printers, which is the largest and most diverse in the world, and launch exciting new products and applications that provide extraordinary value to our customers.

During a period in our industry where cost savings are imperative, we've reduced overall operating costs while selectively doubling down on those industries where additive manufacturing is poised to reshape the market and where we have a unique competitive advantage. I'll provide specific details on these markets in a few moments, Phyllis will summarize the impact of both our cost actions and growth initiatives on our financial performance and trends. Slide 6. I'll start by reviewing our highlights from the fourth quarter. Consistent with past years, we had seasonally strong Q4 in our historic markets. What was unusual this year was the additional top-line benefits specifically related to our 3 key growth initiatives. Given their importance, I'll cover these key growth areas in some detail in a few moments. Revenue increased 16% sequentially above our guidance of 8%-10% growth.

From a product standpoint, these results reflect the strengthening of both our printer and material sales, driven by key new product launches over the last year in both our industrial and healthcare businesses. Let me give you a little more insight into what drove this strength, beginning with changes in our historic markets. Within our industrial solutions business, we saw sequential double-digit growth in several of our more traditional consumer-oriented end markets, including both automotive and jewelry manufacturing. In automotive, this growth reflected the impact of our newest SLA printing platform, specifically our dual laser SLA 750 that we launched just over a year ago, which is the most precise and productive industrial scale SLA printer in the market today. It's being adopted preferentially in both motorsports and in consumer automotive OEMs, delivering significant improvements in productivity in their development labs.

The strong sequential growth in jewelry was driven by the recent launch of our new wax printer, the MJP 300W+, which delivers significantly improved accuracy and surface finish in wax patterns that are central to the casting process. These factors are very important to manufacturers as they provide dramatic reductions in gold loss during final polishing of the product, particularly at a time when gold prices are at record levels. Interesting note with regard to gold jewelry is the rate at which the entire industry is now adopting additive manufacturing, which allows for virtually limitless customization of designs without increasing the cost of the product, or in some cases even reducing it.

Anticipating these inflection points in an industry is essential in order to capitalize on the rapid CapEx investments that follow, disproportionately benefiting those companies that are well-positioned to meet this rise in demand from its outset. With our industry-leading application engineering team, we're experts at doing just this. Within our healthcare solutions business, we saw sequential growth in dental material sales, driven largely by stabilization of demand for aligners. We are also beginning to see sales from the commercial release of our new NextDent jetted denture platform, which is being very well received in the market, and I'll offer some more comments in a moment. Looking beyond these trends in our traditional markets, I'd like to now spend a few minutes on what I believe are the three most exciting growth markets that are opening before us.

These are aerospace and defense, personalized health services, and dental. Applications within these markets greatly benefit from additive manufacturing in that their performance is greatly enhanced by mass customization of design. With the latest evolution of our printing technologies, the manufacturing cost has declined to a point to support rapid adoption. Turning to slide 7. One of our key growth markets is aerospace and defense, which has become the largest and one of the fastest-growing segments within our industrial solutions business. On a full year basis, our aerospace and defense revenue, which includes production printing systems, consumable materials, and custom metal parts, achieved 16% growth, and we continue to expect over 20% growth for 2026. What technologies are required to deliver sustainable revenue growth in aerospace and defense?

Well, the fastest-growing and highest value portion of this market, which is where we're focused, comes from the manufacture of metal parts. These parts can be made in one of two ways, either by metal casting or by direct metal printing. We've invested heavily in both of these technologies. They are playing a vital role in the growth we're now experiencing in this market. In the casting process, our market-leading photopolymer printing technology is used to manufacture complex cores and shells for high-performance cast metal components. While our direct metal printing systems, which are known for outstanding environmental control and precision, are used to manufacture high-value metal parts directly from powder using materials such as titanium and nickel-based superalloys. Indeed, an increasing range of advanced aerospace and defense applications can only be made by direct metal printing due to the complexity of the designs needed for today's applications.

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. Before I begin reviewing our fourth quarter results, I'd like to remind you that we completed the divestiture of our Geomagic software business on April first, 2025. Throughout today's call, I will reference both reported results and adjustment comparisons that exclude Geomagic to provide a clear apples to apples comparison of our performance across periods. Additionally, in the fourth quarter of 2024, we recorded a one-time regenerative medicine accounting adjustment that reduced revenue by $8.7 million due to a change in estimate. I will reference this accounting adjustment when discussing certain prior year comparisons. I would like to start off by highlighting a few of our key accomplishments in 2025. We have been strongly focused on driving expense reductions while also supporting new product launches, strengthening our balance sheet by reducing debt, and improving operational excellence and cost discipline.

These actions have enhanced the strength of our core business while allowing us to invest in new growth opportunities that are now beginning to deliver results. I will begin with revenue for the quarter. Turning to slide 15. Fourth quarter consolidated revenue was $106.3 million, an increase of 3% year-over-year, adjusting for Geomagic. When further adjusting for the regenerative medicine adjustment impacting prior year quarter, consolidated revenue declined 5%. Year-over-year decrease was primarily driven by softness in industrial printer and materials demand, which was partially offset by double-digit growth across our priority markets, including both PHS and aerospace and defense. To slide 16.

As we manage revenue headwinds in the first three quarters of the year, we saw solid strengthening in the Fourth quarter, reflecting not only normal seasonality, but also what we believe to be a return to growth as we exit 2025 and begin 2026. We believe the sequential improvement is driven by returning customer demand and our focus on priority markets that continue to accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing. With that summary, I will now walk through our sequential revenue growth for the quarter. Fourth quarter consolidated revenue increased 16% sequentially from the third quarter, driven by growth in new printer system sales and increased materials consumption. Within our segments, Industrial Solutions revenue was $55.8 million, an increase of 15% sequentially.

This growth was driven by continued strength in aerospace and defense, as well as higher new printer sales within our consumer end markets, including increasing demand for our new NGP printer for jewelry applications. Healthcare Solutions revenue of $50.5 million grew 18% sequentially. This increase was primarily driven by strengthening of dental material sales within the quarter and the continued positive performance of our PHS business. Now moving to slide 17. In reviewing 2025 performance, the additive manufacturing industry faced strong macroeconomic headwinds impacting customer spending. As a result, we realized a decline in our year-over-year revenue. For the full year 2025, consolidated revenue was $387 million. When adjusting for the divestiture of Geomagic, revenue declined 7% year-over-year or 9% when adjusting for both Geomagic and the prior year regenerative medicine adjustment. Turning to slide 18.

For the fourth quarter, non-GAAP gross margin was 31%, up 3% when adjusting for Geomagic and down 2% when adjusting for both Geomagic and regenerative medicine. For full year 2025, non-GAAP gross margin was 34.3%, down 70 basis points when adjusting for Geomagic, and down 2 percentage points when adjusting for both Geomagic and regenerative medicine. Non-GAAP gross margin decline over the prior periods was primarily driven by lower sales volume and less favorable product mix in the current quarter. Moving to slides 19 and 20. We continue to see the positive impact of our cost reduction initiatives both in the fourth quarter and for the full year 2025. In the fourth quarter, non-GAAP operating expenses were $43 million, down 23% or $13 million from the prior year period when adjusting for Geomagic.

For the full year, non-GAAP operating expenses were $196 million, a reduction of 19% or $46 million year-over-year when adjusting for Geomagic. We remain keenly focused on executing the cost reduction initiatives we have previously outlined. Actions already underway and that will be complete by the first half of 2026 include optimizing our organizational capacity, streamlining our facility footprint, and reducing expenses across our business. To date, our cost reduction and efficiency programs have delivered approximately $55 million in annualized savings completed in 2025, exceeding our target of $50 million. Looking ahead to the first half of 2026, our cost savings initiatives will remain closely aligned with the company's 2026 priorities, ensuring we focus on investments on the products and markets with the strongest opportunities for both growth and profitability. Moving to slide 21 to finalize the P&L.

Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was negative $5.3 million, an improvement of $17 million compared to the prior year when adjusting for Geomagic. For the full year 2025, adjusted EBITDA was negative $45.4 million, an improvement of $31 million when adjusting for Geomagic. Adjusted EBITDA improvements were primarily driven by the company's cost reduction initiatives, which delivered meaningful expense reductions throughout 2025. Full year 2025 non-GAAP loss per share was $0.37, an improvement from a loss of $0.62 in the prior year period. Moving to slide 22 for a review of the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $97.1 million in total cash, consisting of $95.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and one and a half million in restricted cash.

During the quarter, we executed an equitization transaction to retire the majority of our debt scheduled to mature in the fourth quarter of 2026. As a result, only $3.9 million of that debt now remains outstanding, with the remaining $92 million scheduled to mature in 2030. As we move to 2026, my priorities remain focused on continuing to optimize our cost structure while working closely with the business to prioritize the key growth markets. Lastly, I'll turn to slide 23 for an update on the company's 2026 outlook. Given the current geopolitical environment and its potential impact on near-term macroeconomic conditions, we believe at this time it is appropriate to limit financial guidance the first quarter of 2026.

Hi, good morning. Phyllis, I may have missed it. I apologize, did you give any color as to how we should be thinking about operating expense at the seasonally weaker Q1 just versus Q4?

I think operating expenses, you know, remember Q1 is seasonally more higher for us in terms of spend. When you look for 2026, I'd say look for slight increases in Q1 and Q2 with a pretty steep drop off as we get into Q3 and Q4 to normalize a little bit less year-over-year than what we had in 2025.

I appreciate that. Just how much of that industrial business is currently being derived from A&D? Jeff, you highlighted several drivers in that A&D business. How balanced are these revenue streams in A&D, or is it more concentrated in any one area?

On your last question there, Jim, it's pretty diverse. The four areas I outlined, and I know they're still very broad areas, so I'd try to give some more concrete examples, but those four areas are all strong. And I, you know, A&D is such a broad area. You could find other areas to focus on too. For us, the four areas I mentioned are, we know we have a good technology base, we have a good runway in, and we're doing well in. You know, I really like the naval applications. Doing very well. The, you know, printing these more exotic materials that are resistant to seawater is great. Some of the lightweight structures for rockets and planes, terrific stuff. titanium, the more exotic aluminum alloys, things like that are required for those are super.

The propulsion systems themselves for rockets, particularly interesting, and then also aero propulsion for engines. Those are all really exciting areas. In terms of total revenue, I don't. Have we broken that out?

We have not. It is one of our top industrial segments. It's on track to be our largest industrial segment or market within the 2026 fiscal year. It continues to produce sizable and meaningful revenue both on the top and bottom line for industrial. Its growth is about 16% year-over-year, from 2024 to 2025, with really heavy sales coming from both printers and parts in 2025 as well.

Jim, certainly the added capacity we're putting in Littleton right now should be done by early summer, and then we'll be phasing that in the second half of the year. It reflects the growing demand we see from, broadly from DoD driven applications that are working really with their tier one suppliers to those defense systems.

Got it. Thanks very much.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Going back to Q4, just a couple of questions on the results in terms of the upside on revenue, I guess what outperformed relative to expectations back in, I guess, November. On gross margin specifically, can you just maybe unpack that a little bit more? I think it was negative mix, but that was down sequentially on much higher revenues, maybe just a little bit more color there.

Sure. Just looking at Q4, I think we over-indexed really in aerospace and defense, the mix for aerospace and defense, both on the margin side, but then a little bit of upside on the top line revenue was strong. PHS and our liner materials were strong for the quarter. We also had an upswing in our healthcare parts for the quarter as well, which helped contribute to the excess, you know, revenue that we, you know, anticipated when we first set guidance. I think we were pretty spot on. On the margin side, you know, we heavily were weighted towards printers. In Q4, we had several new printer launches in the back half of the year.

Printers just carry a lower margin, so I wasn't too surprised in seeing that. The overall just decline in revenue year-over-year holistically was what we'll address next year as we start to look at margin pull through from some of the new printer launches and just the increase in volume overall for the year.

Okay. Just thinking about Q1 specifically, I just wanna make sure I'm understanding this right. You're guiding revenue down quite a bit sequentially. You're guiding OpEx up a little bit and, you know, improved EBITDA. This is all sequentially. That implies, I mean, a massive boost in gross margin from Q4 to Q1. I just wanna make sure that's what the guide implies.

I'll correct 1 item. We are pretty consistent with the prior year if you exclude Geomagic. Geomagic had, you know, high revenue in Q1 of 2025. That was the last quarter in which we had Geomagic. We've replaced that revenue with other sources for Q1 of 2026, and we had very strong operational expense savings that are gonna be coming through Q1 as well. While I said it's a seasonally higher spending, our overall reductions are gonna see meaningful results as we report results for Q1. On the margin side, I think we're doing things to protect the margin in terms of just additional cost savings activities as well as anticipated better pricing in Q1. Both of those things I think should help to the overall adjusted EBITDA improvement you're seeing.

Okay. I guess I'm looking from Q4 to Q1, and I just wanna make sure it based on what you've said, it implies gross margin is going to improve.

Okay.

I mean, meaningfully quarter-over-quarter. I just wanna make sure that's what the guide implies.

Yeah. Again, I'd say you have to look at it. We certainly are anticipating gross margin improvement in Q1, but we're also anticipating, you know, continued execution of our operational cost reductions in the quarter. The mix of both of those will drive the adjusted EBITDA improvement. We didn't give specific guidance on those two as again, product mix as we close out the quarter will really sort of align on that. Overall, we anticipate gross margin improvement for sure.

Okay. Thanks. Then just cognizant of the fact that you're only giving one quarter guidance at this point. I mean, if we just think about, you know, some of the segment, A&D, you've talked about 20% growth this year. You know, personalized health, that's growing strongly. Seems like dental's improving. You're still guiding the Q1 revenue declines on a year-over-year basis, just modestly at the midpoint. I mean, is that just a weak spot, you know, for the year? I'm just trying to sort of reconcile a lot of these sort of growth areas to the Q1 guide, which still suggest a revenue decline on a year-over-year basis.

Greg, it's very hard to call the actual inflection point. We're just trying to. You know, I love the direction that it's going. It feels good after a couple of tough years. Things are moving in the right direction. We're just trying not to get too far ahead of ourselves. Yeah, it's there's no particular weakness or something that, you know, we expect in Q1 to swamp results or anything. It's continuing the trend. A&D should grow consistently. The rest of industrial is always a wild card, to be frank with you. It's much more dependent upon how people feel about the world. As you know, you know, it's a bit crazy out there right now. Oil's way up and stuff.

When it comes to discretionary spending on the part of consumers, that's always a concern for me when it comes to, you know, our more consumer-oriented business. You know, with that said, we, you know, it looked really good in Q4. It looks like it's coming back. We're launching some great new products there. It's just a more volatile. The consumer stuff's a bit more volatile. I love A&D. I've got high confidence there. We're gonna continue the trend. Healthcare, very stable because most of that stuff's not optional with the exception of aligners. Some people put off aligner purchases when things get harder. Our increased exposure to dentures is a good thing. That's gonna continue throughout the year to grow.

Certainly PHS is a very good thing 'cause a lot of those procedures are really not optional procedures for orthopedics. We're just trying, you know, we're reintroducing some guidance. We're trying to be prudent about it. I'm not gonna say it's conservative. Just trying to be prudent about how far out over our skis we get in terms of the future.

Yeah, fair enough. Okay, thanks.

Thanks, Greg.

Hi, it's Kieran on for Troy. I just had a couple of questions. I guess the first is, you know, you had in the past a lot of R&D spend to refresh the product line to bring out a lot of new products that are now, you know, showing up in the results, especially in this quarter. Given kind of your focus areas of A&D and the personal healthcare area, sort of in maintaining some investments, kind of based upon 4Q R&D, kind of what's your outlook for R&D going forward?

Well, it's in the OPEX number, Kieran. We don't really break it out. We had very strong spending. If you look at R&D spending, we had very strong spending for about three years to refresh our product lines. What you're seeing now enter the market is reflective of that investment. I, you know, it was a difficult time with sales being off to maintain that continuity, but it was critically important to us because when these markets turn, you've got to have a fresh portfolio ready to go, and we do. We've been able to throttle back on R&D spending to some extent as we launch those new products, because the next platform will be out, you know, anywhere from a year to three years, so depending on the market.

You're able to throttle back a little bit on R&D spending. It's a kind of a natural cycle a company goes through. We went through a heavy period. Heavy period at a difficult time of sales, which is why OpEx was a drag for us. It was certainly reflected in the bottom line financials and our cash position. We invested a lot for the future. I'm really pleased now that we're on the backside of that we did it, and we're well positioned as the markets rebound. It's just the world's a little bit crazy right now still, we just wanna be cautious about sales, make sure we don't get out in front of the market on it. I feel like we're very well positioned.

R&D spending for us should be as a part of OpEx, will be coming down to some extent. Also, Kieran, one thing to remember is we have the broadest technology portfolio in the entire industry, okay? We have metals and polymers. In polymers, we have five significant platforms. That's wonderful from a customer standpoint. We can service them, we can grow. It's a burden from an R&D standpoint. When you look at our R&D burden, fundamentally, it's heavier than most because of the breadth of our technology. In a growth environment, it positions you very well to serve the customer. I, you know, I feel very good about our position. We are able to throttle back a little bit now because we were doing every refresh in parallel for three years.

Now it's coming down to, you know, one here and one there, and we can get more into rhythm of it. It helps us with our OpEx management here in 2026.

I would say we have not excessively cut R&D. We certainly have pared it back. We have a sizable R&D budget for 2026 that's in the overall OPEX budget. It's right-sized to the current portfolio that we have and the product investment priorities that we have. You'll definitely see that come in. It's still double digits. It's lower double digits than what it has been, but I think fits the product roadmap and new product launches we have for next year.

Kieran, a great example of the strength of that approach is when you look at metal parts for aerospace and defense, there's two ways that they're fundamentally made broadly. One's casting, where they use our 3D polymer printers for as an integral part of, and one is direct metal printing for the more difficult alloys or the higher performing components. Both of those are in demand in the aerospace defense market. In both cases, we have launched new product upgrades over the last 12 months that are fabulous. That's why we're growing in aerospace and defense. It's the high value end of the market. That's where you wanna be.

All right. I guess.

Okay. Does that take care of it, Kieran?

My other question was just on speaking of aerospace and Defense, you know, everybody kind of is looking at aerospace Defense as a growth area because, you know, geopolitical and kind of the assumption that there'll be increased spending in that area. Even with aerospace and Defense, how much of it is really kind of the companies and the government wanting to be more efficient and using additive to maybe change the method of producing the parts? You may not need a new program, but maybe, you know...

Yeah.

not be tied to that procurement budget, really kind of saying, "Well, we have this budget and we have to be smarter about it, and may not expect the growth or politics to get the growth eventually." How much of it, you know, is sort of really kind of rethinking and being more efficient and reducing times and things like that, and really using additives to do that?

You touched on a good point, Karen. Part of the demand in aerospace and defense is just new weaponry coming out and new vehicles to deliver that weaponry. You've got the advent of drones, you've got new generations of naval ships. Part of it is the natural evolution of technology that's drawing in, 'cause additive is really good at those things. The other part of it, and I'd say there's two pieces. One is cost savings. By moving from an assembly of many pieces to a casting that's a single piece casting, you can simplify the system and get cost out of the manufacturing process, out of the finished product. That's significant.

When you look at a modern rocket engine compared to 3 years ago, and just look at the amount of complexity in the engine then versus now. It's amazing simplification. At the same time, they're taking performance up. That's available through 3D printed cores and shells for castings. Then on direct metal applications, you've got the added benefit of a dramatically reduced cycle time for manufacturing and safer supply chains. More localized, more close to home, and that can respond much more quickly.

The example I put in the opening statements about the reduction for some of these naval components going from 12 to 15 months production time with traditional manufacturing to literally a couple of weeks to produce the same component out of the same materials. You've got higher performance, you've got cost savings that are coming together in aerospace and defense that's really transforming the industry. Yes, overall volumes are up, demand is up, but you've got some key drivers that are highly sustainable in the kinds of parts we're working on. Okay?

Great. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Thanks, Kevin. I'd like to thank you all for participating in the call today, and we look forward to updating you on our progress once again after the close of the first quarter. Have a great day.