Piper Jaffray: Time To Buy Stratasys

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After an extremely volatile three-year period in which the company’s share price witnessed a huge run-up and then a massive sell-off, Stratasys, Ltd. SSYS is now once again a buy, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Troy Jensen. In a new report, Piper Jaffray upgrades Stratasys from Neutral to Overweight, and Jensen explains why he sees a bright long-term future for the 3D printing company.

Q2 Earnings

Stratasys recently reported Q2 revenue of $182.3 million, short of consensus expectations of $183.8 million. In its conference call, the company blamed challenging foreign macro environments, forex pressures and weak MakerBot demand for the lackluster quarter. MakerBot revenue fell 57 percent year-over-year in the quarter.

However, it wasn’t all bad news for Stratasys in Q2. Gross margins increased by 0.60 percent quarter-over-quarter to 54.7 percent on the strength of higher-end sales.

Segmental Performance

System revenue was the major culprit behind the disappointing Q2 revenue number, falling 21.0 percent year-over-year. The company shipped 54.9 percent fewer printers in Q2 than in the same quarter last year.

Service revenue, on the other hand, increased 96.2 percent year-over-year in Q2 and has grown to 26.2 percent of the company’s total sales.

Outlook

According to Jensen, the 3D printing industry is still working off the excess capacity that came about as a result of a media-driven frenzy for 3D printing in recent years.

“We believe the industry will return to more normalized grow rates in 2016 and anticipate Stratasys will grow faster than the market given a robust pipeline of new technologies and materials,” Jensen explained.

Despite the upgrade, Piper Jaffray lowered its price target for Stratasys from $42 to $39.

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Posted In: Analyst ColorUpgradesPrice TargetAnalyst RatingsPiper JaffrayTroy Jensen.
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