28. Bryan Dow, Stifel - A Capital Markets Outlook on Digital Industrial Innovation

Bryan has easily been one of the most active investment bankers within the digital industrial ecosystem, and he kicks off the discussion outlining why he believes Desktop Metal’s SPAC in late 2020 was the catalyst that set off the record level of dry powder in the capital markets to target the digital manufacturing ecosystem. He walks us through how 8 months after Desktop Metal’s SPAC there have been 61 transactions and ~$7B in transaction volume; which is on par for the entire history of investment in this category. Of those 61 deals, 22 deals and $5B were in public equity (SPACS, Follow-ons, IPOs), 22 deals and $1.3B were in M&A, and 17 deals and $420M were in private markets. We then discuss why we both feel this current flurry of manufacturing investment activity both is not a bubble and is structurally very different than the digital manufacturing wave of 2013-2014 (3D Systems, Stratasys, Protolabs, etc.), and how SPACs specifically have re-emerged in the capital markets to fill a growth-stage investment gap that existed in this category. Finally, we wrap up with a ‘What’s hot and what’s hype?’ section on innovation trends Bryan is seeing in the market.