Velo3D, Inc., a leading additive manufacturing technology company for mission-critical metal parts, announced four key strategic priorities for growth in 2024 and beyond. The company also shared progress it has made across these priorities.
- Enhance the quality of newly manufactured Sapphire printers: Due to the success of its operational initiatives and product improvements, the company has significantly reduced the installation time of Sapphire printers over the last year. Additionally, the company has increased headcount of its Customer Service and Quality teams by approximately 40% to provide on-site support in all major metropolitan areas.
- Ensure the success of customers in the field: Through reliability improvements, system uptime for key customers has increased over the previous quarter and the company has reduced the time it takes to resolve customer issues by more than 45% over the past 6 months. Velo3D’s research and development priorities have been refocused on customer success and machine throughput, with innovations that the company expects will greatly increase customer available print time.
- Increase revenue visibly through bookings growth: The Velo3D Sales team has secured approximately $12 million in new order bookings since mid-December, including more than 50% of bookings tied to key strategic accounts, which the company believes demonstrates increased customer satisfaction and confidence in its technology.
- Improve margins and cash flow: The company remains on track to reduce its operational expenses by 40% by the end of the first quarter of 2024, with a commitment to become cash flow positive in the second half of the year.
These four initiatives will be the foundation for Velo3D’s 5-year growth plan to support innovation and its customers’ growing demand for additive manufacturing solutions. By executing against these priorities, the company remains committed to its “land-and-expand” strategy, whereby satisfied customers continue to purchase Sapphire printers due to the significant capabilities the technology provides to operations, product, and engineering teams.
“Since meeting with customers in my new role as CEO, it’s clear that they need our technology and with improvements in these four key areas, we can realign as a company to make our customers more successful and return value to investors,” said Brad Kreger, CEO of Velo3D. “The value of our technology is largely driven by its ability to accelerate innovation for customers, meaningfully improve lead time for mission-critical parts, and streamline the process of scaling to volume production when compared to conventional metal 3D printers.”
Kreger joined Velo3D in December 2022 as Executive Vice President of Operations and has since transformed Velo3D’s manufacturing facility to industrialize the production of the company’s family of Sapphire printers, which has contributed to the installation time reduction and positioned the company for margin expansion in 2024. This was achieved through improvements to the supply chain for Velo3D’s Sapphire printers and standardization of the manufacturing process to ensure consistency in quality.
“The entire Velo3D team is deeply focused on our four objectives and we’re beginning to see these changes yield results, including existing customers purchasing new systems. We believe this reflects their confidence in our technology as well as the success of our initiatives in improving customer satisfaction,” said Kreger. “We’re continuing to execute on our cost realignment programs to improve margins and cash flow, while prudently managing working capital. By doing so, we believe we are well positioned to profitably capitalize on the increasing industry demand for leading-edge additive manufacturing solutions.”
