Materialise NV Stock

Materialise NV operates as a provider of additive manufacturing and medical software and of sophisticated 3D printing services.

The customers of the company's general software tools and 3D printing services are active in a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, automotive, aerospace, art and design, and consumer products.

Market Segments

The company operates through three principal market segments: Materialise Software, Materialise Medical, and Materialise Manufacturing.

Materialise Software segment

This segment offers proprietary software worldwide through programs and platforms that enable companies to set up efficient, reliable and sustainable 3D printing production. The company's software supports 3D printing service bureaus both large and small that are producing a variety of parts for their customers and addresses the needs of large corporations producing at volume, either through significant serial manufacturing or mass customization.

The company works directly with many 3D printing machine manufacturers to enable and enhance the functionality of 3D printers and of 3D printing operations. The company has developed software that interfaces between almost all types of industrial 3D printers, and various software applications and capturing technologies, including CAD (computer-aided design)/CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) packages and 3D scanners, by enabling data preparation and process planning and execution.

The company's programs interface with machines manufactured by leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), such as EOS GmbH, HP Inc.; DesktopMetal, Inc.; Renishaw PLC; SLM Solutions Group AG; Stratasys Ltd.; Trumpf GmbH & Co. KG; Uniontech Corporation; GE Additive; and Voxeljet AG. In addition, the company has entered into partnership agreements with leading CAD, CAM and product lifecycle management (PLM) companies, such as Siemens, HCL Technologies Ltd., and PTC, for the integration of the company's additive manufacturing technology into Siemens' NX software, HCL's CAMworks, and PTC's Creo software. This enables the streamlining of the design to manufacturing process for products being produced by additive manufacturing. The company offers software that enables its customers to more efficiently organize the entire workflow of a 3D printing operation with multiple 3D printing machines, many operators and complex data flow and logistical requirements.

As of December 31, 2022, the company's Materialise Software segment had a team of FTEs (full-time equivalent employees) and fully dedicated consultants, with approximately 31.9% based at its headquarters in Belgium and the remaining employees distributed throughout the company's local field offices in China, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

On January 4, 2022, the company completed the acquisition of Link3D and began the integration of Link3D into the company's Materialise Software segment. The completion of this integration will allow the company to expedite the realization of its plans for a cloud-based platform.

On September 1, 2022, the company completed the acquisition of Identify3D and began the integration of Identify3D into its Software segment. Through this acquisition the company is adding a crucial security component to its cloud-based CO-AM platform by offering features designed to ensure the security of 3D files.

Business Model

The company generates revenue in its Materialise Software segment from its software licenses, maintenance contracts, hardware controller sales for its Materialise Controllers and custom software development services. Additionally, the company offers consultancy and training services. The company licenses its software products to its customers on either a time-based or perpetual basis, in which case it offers annual maintenance contracts that provide for software updates and support. In addition, the company provides a number of cloud-based solutions. Making use of, among others, the cloud-based platform that has been developed by Link3D and that is commercialized under the CO-AM brand, the company is significantly accelerating the migration of its software solutions to the cloud, which it intends to offer along with its license-based solutions.

Software Products

The company has a diversified portfolio, which consists of software applications addressing different 3D printing market opportunities. In particular, the company offers the following software applications:

Magics: Magics enables customers to import a wide variety of CAD formats and to export standard tessellation language (STL) files ready for additive manufacturing. Magics' applications include repairing and optimizing 3D models; analyzing parts; making process-related design changes on customers' STL files; designing support structures; documenting customer projects; nesting multiple parts in a single print run; and process planning.

The company's Magics product suite is enhanced with modules that further expand functionality and utility for its customers. For instance, the Magics Import Module plays an important role in efficiently moving CAD designs through to manufactured products by importing nearly all standard CAD formats into Magics. The Magics Structures Module was designed to help customers to reduce weight and material usage in their designs. The company also has developed logistical modules, such as the Magics SG Module, which offers tools for support structure design during the 3D printing process; and the Magics Sintermodule, which offers solutions for automated part nesting, protecting small and fragile parts and locating them after building. The Magics Simulation Module enables the company's users to simulate the build process virtually, and optimizes the build preparation based on the results of such simulation, thus reducing build failures and improving the results.

In addition to offering state-of-the-art data preparation functionality to the company's users, its Magics product suite focuses on automation and other productivity improvements and brings interconnectivity to machines and enterprise software platforms.

Specific versions of the Magics application were also brought to the market by the company, including Magics Essentials (an entry-level package offering premium data preparation functionality), Magics Print (combining the most important build preparation tools and straightforward build file generation technology) and MiniMagics/MiniMagicsPro (providing viewing, communication and quoting solutions for the company's customers working in data preparation, or in quoting and quality control teams). Users of Magics Essentials and Magics Print can upgrade to the company's expert Materialise Magics product suite if they want the full data and build preparation functionality at their disposal in one package.

CO-AM: CO-AM is an additive workflow and digital manufacturing software platform that supports customers in major manufacturing industries and large AM service bureaus to scale and integrate their additive manufacturing operations across complex supply chains and IT environments. At the core of the CO-AM platform is the customers' project data. The CO-AM platform provides a series of applications that are instrumental to organizations scaling their additive manufacturing capability. These solutions enable organizations to plan, manage, and optimize their operations. The platform includes centralized order management, quoting and costing, production planning, production scheduling, postproduction management, machine connectivity, and quality management and manufacturing analytics.

Streamics: Streamics is the company's legacy 3D Print planning system that it considers as the predecessor of the CO-AM platform. The company is gradually migrating Streamics functionality to its CO-AM platform, while also providing a connector between Streamics and CO-AM that will allow current Streamics users to start using CO-AM applications while still making use of Streamics for the planning of their 3D printing capacity. Once the Streamics functionality is fully integrated in CO-AM, a transition plan will be set up to migrate existing Streamics customers to the Link3D platform over the coming years. In the meantime, the company will continue to maintain and support Streamics and its customers.

3-maticSTL: 3-maticSTL is a versatile application that permits, among other things, design modification, design simplification, 3D texturing, re-meshing and forward engineering directly to standard additive manufacturing STL files. Using Materialise consultancy services, targeted design automation solutions can be created for specific workflows.

Build Processors: The company works in close collaboration with a wide variety of 3D printer OEMs to develop customized and integrated solutions for their additive manufacturing machines. The company's build processors automatically translate the 3D model data into layer data to provide sliced geometry and can link the latter with the appropriate build parameters to feed the machine control software. Another key benefit of the company's build processors is that they allow for a two-way communication between Magics and 3D printers. The company also develops the metal build processors in Materialise Bremen and as a consequence it is able to cover a wide range of metal 3D printers. Furthermore, licensing and integrating the company's build processor framework, companies, such as Siemens and PTC can also leverage the extensive ecosystem of build processors the company has developed together with OEMs.

e-Stage: e-Stage is a software solution that increases additive manufacturing productivity by automating STL support generation, optimizing the STL build process, and reducing the time the company's customers spend on finishing work, such as build support removal and sanding. e-Stage is designed to allow the company's customers to use less material, to be able to 3D nest and to minimize failed builds. e-Stage for plastic has been commercially available since September 2007, and in the fall of 2017, the company released e-Stage for metal.

Materialise Controller: Materialise Controller controls and steers additive manufacturing machines using embedded Materialise software, and is fully integrated into the Materialise 3D printing software platform. It is engineered towards research and development applications, machine manufacturers and those who want to control or adapt the production process to their specific needs.

Materialise Storefront: A new cloud-based e-commerce solution connected to CO-AM, which automates the intake and sales process of 3D printing factories and facilitates communication with customers. Storefront supports automatic and manual price calculation and quoting, AM data preparation, order management and integration with payment and shipment providers.

Materialise Process Tuner: An intuitive online platform that helps manufacturing companies, service bureaus and machine builders speed up the process tuning that is required for mass-manufacturing 3D printed parts. The Materialise Process Tuner can be accessed via a web-browser, as well as through an API, making it the company's first cloud-native Magics application. Companies can also choose to deploy and run the application on site.

Materialise Workflow Automation: This solution enables the user to leverage the full power of the Materialise Software technology (as also available through Materialise Magics) in creating specific end-to-end workflows, which can be executed automatically and autonomously, or can be called from other software solutions like Magics. Workflow Automation provides the possibility to script simple workflows or to create complex business process workflows using a graphical user interface. The workflows can be executed in the cloud, on premise or on the user's workstation.

Identify3D: Identify3D is a suite of products that plugs into CO-AM and that allows customers to secure datasets throughout the full end-to-end process of 3D printing.

Sales and Marketing

The company markets and distributes its software directly through its sales force, as well as through its own website and third party distributors. The company's Belgian team oversees its global marketing strategy and sales processes. The company's local field office employees manage sales for particular markets and provide pre- and post-sales technical support to the company's customers. The company also utilizes a growing network of distributors and resellers to bring the its solutions to specific regions or market segments. In addition, machine manufacturers and their local dealers often distribute the company's software products together with their 3D printers, with its software enhancing the printers' value proposition and broadening the suite of applications available to the machines.

Customers

The customers for the company's Materialise Software segment include 3D printing machine manufacturers, as well as production companies and contract manufacturers in a variety of industries, such as the automotive, aerospace, consumer goods and hearing aid industries, and external 3D printing service bureaus. The company's Materialise Software segment customer base is spread across Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Materialise Medical segment

This segment's product and services offering addresses long-term trends in the medical industry towards personalized, functional and evidence-based medicine.

As of December 31, 2022, the company's Materialise Medical segment consisted of approximately 888 FTEs and fully dedicated consultants, with approximately 24.0% based at the company's headquarters in Belgium and the remaining employees distributed throughout the company's local offices in Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Business Model

The company generates revenue in its Materialise Medical segment through the sale of medical software and personalized medical devices. The company sells licenses to its medical software packages and software maintenance contracts and sells medical devices that the company customizes and print for its customers. The company also provides custom software development and engineering services. The majority of the medical devices that the company printed in 2022 were surgical guides (and related bone models) that were distributed to surgeons through its collaboration partners, such as DePuy Synthes (DePuy Synthes Companies of Johnson & Johnson), Smith & Nephew (Smith & Nephew Inc.), Stryker, and Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc. (Zimmer Biomet). The company also prints patient-specific implants that it sells directly to hospitals or distribute through partners, such as DePuy Synthes. The customer base for its medical software products includes academic institutions, medical device companies and hospitals.

Medical Software

The company's software allows medical-image based analysis, planning and engineering, as well as patient-specific design and printing of surgical devices and implants. The company's customers include leading research institutes, renowned hospitals, and major medical device companies. The company's medical software packages are:

Materialise Mimics Innovation Suite: The Materialise Mimics Innovation Suite is a complete set of tools developed for biomedical professionals that allows them to perform a multitude of engineering operations based on medical imaging data. The suite consists of several complementary products and services, including Materialise Mimics, Materialise 3-matic, engineering services, and medical models, as well as consultancy and custom software development.

Materialise Mimics: Materialise Mimics is software addressing medical professionals specifically developed for medical image processing that can be used to segment accurate 3D models from medical imaging data (for example, from CT or MRI) to measure accurately in 2D and 3D and to export 3D models for additive manufacturing or to Materialise 3-matic.

Materialise 3-matic: Materialise 3-matic focuses on anatomical design and is able to combine CAD tools with pre-processing capabilities directly on the anatomical data coming from Materialise Mimics. It enables the company's customers to conduct thorough 3D measurements and analysis, design a patient-specific implant, a surgical guide, or a benchtop model, and to prepare the anatomical data and/or resulting implants for simulation.

Materialise OrthoView: Materialise OrthoView is a 2D digital pre-operative planning and templating solution for orthopedic surgeons. The software imports a digital X-ray image from a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) and positions the templates of suitable prostheses on the X-ray image at the correct scale. Materialise OrthoView serves more than 15,000 orthopedic surgeons in 60 countries globally, focusing primarily on joint replacements. The company owns OrthoView Holdings Limited and has included the OrthoView solution in its portfolio of pre-operative planning solutions.

Materialise Mimics inPrint: With Materialise Mimics inPrint, clinicians can easily create files for 3D printing and use anatomically accurate models to help simulate or evaluate options for patient-specific surgical treatment.

Materialise ProPlan CMF: Materialise ProPlan CMF is a software package developed for oral, maxillofacial, nose, throat and plastic surgeons. The software allows surgeons to pre-operatively plan their surgeries in 3D based on (CB) CT or MRI images using a set of tools to analyze, measure and reconstruct the patient's anatomy. With the software the surgeon can also plan the movements (translations and rotations) of the mandible or maxilla and preplan the reconstruction of defects.

Materialise Mimics Enlight: Materialise Mimics Enlight is a workflow-based planning software that enables companies, clinicians and hospitals to scale 3D planning for procedures. Mimics Enlight is based on the strengths of Materialise's Mimics Innovation Suite and can be applied in various clinical fields, such as structural heart or lung surgery.

Materialise Surgicase: Materialise Surgicase is an online case management platform that enables medical device companies and hospitals to manage ordering and processing of personalized services and devices.

Clinical Services and Personalized Medical Devices

Using the company's FDA (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration)-cleared and CE compliant medical software, it analyzes 3D medical images of patients and provides doctors with virtual surgical planning services for their review and approval. In most cases, the company also designs and 3D prints surgical guides that uniquely fit a specific patient and allow the surgeon to conduct the operation in accordance with the approved surgical plan. In certain circumstances, the company delivers 3D printed customized patient-specific medical implants.

In the company's 3D printing centers in Belgium, Japan, Brazil, and the United States, the company has separate production lines for its Materialise Medical segment.

The company's medical image-based simulation and planning software and 3D printing technology can assist hospitals and clinicians in providing personalized care to patients, which can contribute to increased quality of life.

In many cases, surgeons using the company's clinical services work together with the company's clinical engineers to turn their patients' medical image data into virtual surgical plans, and patient-specific 3D printed precise surgical and customized anatomical models to optimize intervention planning. For indications, such as shoulder surgery, the company has optimized and automated its 3D planning capabilities to provide surgical plans within a short timeframe and at a high quality that does not require an anatomical model to be provided. Utilizing the company's SurgiCase tool, surgeons upload CT or MRI medical image data and submit their cases to it, track their cases and review them as interactive virtual 3D models. In the framework of the company's collaborations with certain leading medical device companies, its SurgiCase tool is rebranded and adapted to the specific product offering and needs of its collaboration partners.

In many cases surgeons use personalized surgical guides or implants to translate the surgical plan into the operating room. The company's 3D printed surgical guides include joint replacement guides for knee, shoulder and hip replacement surgeries; osteotomy guides; and CMF guides, as well as the company's 3D printed implants include hip-revision implants, shoulder and CMF implants. The surgical guides and implants the company prints for the U.S. based patients are FDA-cleared, and to the extent required by law, the company's medical devices for EEA (European Economic Area)-based patients bear the appropriate CE labels.

The company addresses large surgical markets in orthopedics and CMF through collaboration agreements with leading medical device companies, including DePuy Synthes, Zimmer Biomet, Enovis, and Smith & Nephew. Pursuant to these agreements, the company prints joint replacement and/or CMF guides that its collaboration partners distribute under their own brands, together with their own implants, in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Latin America, Europe, China, Japan, and Australia. The company leverages its collaboration partners' distribution capabilities to extend its reach into these large markets, and its collaboration partners utilize its 3D printing-related expertise to provide surgical planning and customized devices to surgeons.

The company also addresses certain high value-added, specialty applications by providing the full solution itself, including the delivery of implants and guides directly to the hospital or surgeon. Such applications include customized CMF implants and guides, hip revision and shoulder implants in a patented porous matrix configuration and osteotomy guides. Through Engimplan Engenharia De Implante Indústria E Comercio Ltda. (Engimplan), the company distributes implants and instruments in Brazil, offering both traditional and 3D printed CMF products, as well as a broader portfolio that includes product lines for trauma and sport medicine.

The company also works with customers to print anatomical models that may be used for a wide range of applications, such as sizing of medical devices, clinical trials, training, patient communications and marketing.

Sales and Marketing

The company distributes its medical software through its direct sales force, its website and PACS partners (some of which partners also include its OrthoView (OrthoView Holdings Limited) solutions in their product offering to hospitals); and sells its medical devices through its agreements with collaboration partners, such as Zimmer Biomet and Depuy Synthes. In specialty markets, the company markets and distributes its 3D printed medical devices and other clinical services through its experienced engineers who develop a close collaboration with key opinion leaders in each of these market segments.

All the company's activities in its Materialise Medical segment are coordinated and supervised from its headquarters in Belgium, which supervises product management and the sale of its medical devices and software products.

Customers

The customers for the company's Materialise Medical segment mainly include medical device companies, hospitals, universities, research institutes, and industrial companies. The company has one individual customer that represents sales larger than 10% of its total revenue in 2022.

Collaboration Partners

The company collaborates with leading medical device companies and academic institutions for the development and distribution of its surgical planning software, services, and products, such as Zimmer Biomet and DePuy Synthes, as well as Enovis, Integra, Lima (Limacorporate Spa), Mathys (Mathys AG), Medtronic (Medtronic Inc.), Abbott (Abbott Laboratories Inc.), and Corin (Corin Ltd). Pursuant to these arrangements, the company develops and licenses software and sells surgical planning, guides and implants, including for use in the fields of knee and shoulder replacement, CMF and thoracic procedures that the company's collaboration partners may then distribute under their own brands, together with their own implants, mainly in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia. In addition, the company grants licenses to collaboration partners to use, market and distribute such software or surgical guides and implants. Some of the licenses the company has granted to its products and software provide for exclusive rights, including with respect to a particular field of medicine or to the software or product developed during the collaboration, and certain collaboration partners may have rights of first refusal with respect to related products or collaborations.

Competition

In the company's Materialise Medical segment, it competes with a number of companies that provide image based software, 3D printed surgical models or medical devices, such as 3DSystems, Stratasys (Stratasys Ltd.), Simpleware, and Pie Medical.

Materialise Manufacturing segment

This segment primarily offers 3D printing services to industrial and commercial customers, the majority of which are located in Europe. In addition, the company has identified, and provides 3D printing services to certain specialty growth markets in both the industrial and consumer marketplaces.

The company delivers products to highly regulated industries, such as the aerospace, healthcare, machine manufacturing, quality control equipment and consumer goods industries, where its applications, technology and hardware capabilities enable the company to adhere to high quality standards in a certified production environment.

As of December 31, 2022, the company's Materialise Manufacturing segment consisted of 760 FTEs and fully dedicated consultants, with 31% based at its headquarters in Belgium and in Materialise Motion and Rapid Fit. The remaining employees distributed throughout its local field offices in Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Poland, Spain, Ukraine, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Business Model

The company generates a majority of its revenue in its Materialise Manufacturing segment through the sale of parts that it prints for its customers. The company generates a smaller portion of its revenue by the sale of scanners and software solutions in its eyewear and footwear business.

Business-to-Business Services

The company offers the following services in its Materialise Manufacturing segment:

Additive Manufacturing Solutions

The company provides design and engineering services, rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing of production parts to customers serving the automotive, consumer goods industrial goods, semiconductor, art and architecture and aerospace markets. Its service centers offer a variety of 3D printing technologies, including stereolithography, laser sintering, FDM (Filament Fusion), PolyJet, Multi Jet Fusion, selective laser melting (SLM), and vacuum casting. The company has a dedicated production line for making aerospace-certified components using a number of technologies and materials.

Specialty Industrial Solutions

The company has developed additive manufacturing solutions that serve certain specialty industrial applications.

The company's RapidFit+ business utilizes additive manufacturing to provide customers active in the automotive market with customized, highly precise, and in certain cases, patent protected measurement and fixturing tools. Using additive manufacturing technology, RapidFit+ fixtures provide more functionality and flexibility than the traditional fixtures that are widely used in the automotive industry. The company also offers production tooling that has substantially better ergonomics and improved functionality compared to traditional fixtures.

ACTech (ACTech Holding GmbH and its subsidiaries) provides specialized solutions mainly for the automotive industry. In particular, ACTech supplies prototyping of highly complex metal components through casting techniques that result in products that have a production grade performance. The casting is done using 3D printed sand molds, while the final functionality of the components is achieved by a fully integrated post processing of the components in the company's CNC workshop.

Wearables Initiatives in Consumer Industry

The company has developed two wearables verticals for the consumer market.

In the company's eyewear vertical, it offers a complete end-to-end solution for 3D-printed, often custom, eyewear frames. The resulting file can be printed in the company's eyewear production line, and it provides the necessary finishing, assembly steps and packaging.

The company, through Materialise Motion, offers a full suite of solutions for footcare professionals. The company offers digital measurement tools and personalized solutions to footcare professionals treating foot or gait problems. By means of its foot scan plates, the company can capture a dynamic scan of a person's foot sole and combined with its software tools, the company creates custom insoles based on this scan. The insoles are 3D printed, finished, and assembled in a dedicated production line. The company's research and product development teams aim to build a growing suite of solutions for patients with different types of motion problems.

Sales and Marketing

The company markets its services to its additive manufacturing solutions business customers using its sales force and through its website. The company's more complex product offerings are addressed directly by its specialized sales teams who are located throughout Europe near its larger accounts and who align its customers' needs with the wide range of 3D printing technologies or market-specific solutions that the company offers. More straightforward products can be ordered directly by its customers through its 'Materialise OnSite' or i.materialise web portals, a proprietary automated system that takes orders, provides quotes and manages the printing process from start to finish, and allows customers to track the manufacturing and shipment process of their product online. Within its larger sales teams, specialized sales managers focus either on rapid prototyping, which is the company's traditional and well-established market, or the additive manufacturing of end-use production parts, which is the market where the company sees opportunities for significant growth. The company's marketing team in Belgium oversees its global marketing strategy. In addition, employees at its Belgian headquarters and in its local field offices manage sales for particular markets and accounts and provide back office and production management support to its customers.

For the company's specialty markets and wearables initiatives, it has separate sales teams that offer its customers the necessary expertise in their domain. The company's sales teams have a direct approach to the market but in some cases it also works with partners or distributors locally to address specific market segments, such as the large segments of eyewear opticians or footcare professionals.

Customers

The customers for the company's Materialise Manufacturing segment are from a wide variety of industries, including the automotive, aerospace, healthcare, semiconductor, industrial goods, art and design and consumer products. For these customers, the company offers a complete set of services ranging from consultancy and co-creation, to design and engineering, rapid prototyping, and certified manufacturing of end-use parts.

Through the company's consultancy offering, which the company brands as Materialise Mindware, it works together with customers to solve complex design challenges and to discuss how the introduction of 3D printing can affect product development, manufacturing workflow, business models and customer experiences. For example, a co-creation with HOYA (HOYA Vision Care Company), in collaboration with Hoet Design Studio, saw the launch of the world's first vision-centric, 3D-tailored eyewear solution, Yuniku. Yuniku enables individualized lens and frame design through a sophisticated end-to-end digital supply chain, which includes a custom 3D scanner and software platform, co-created by the company and HOYA, directly linked to its eyewear manufacturing factory.

The company, through its design and engineering service, also services those customers looking for support in their initial concept design or with maximizing a design for 3D printing. The company's design and engineering team, which consists of highly specialized designers and CAD engineers, offers dedicated design and software support for additive manufacturing, including remodeling and file preparation, as well as 3D scanning and measuring. The company's team also offers trainings to engineering professionals active in various markets to accelerate the adoption of design for additive manufacturing.

The customers of both the company's Materialise OnSite and i.materialise platforms ordered through its website. Materialise OnSite customers tend to be industrial customers looking to rapid prototype parts quickly and reliably, often taking advantage of fast-lane machines to ensure short lead times for time-critical projects. For i.materialise, while there is a potential to address the wide consumer market with this platform, the company prefers to describe its customers as 'home professionals'. The company's i.materialise client base includes independent designers and CAD hobbyists that often sell their creations or their services to others, including in certain instances, through the i.materialise gallery. Through i.materialise's APIs, companies can also partner with i.materialise to give their own customers a cloud-based, 3D-printing solution on their website, streamlining the ordering, manufacturing and shipping processes through a direct link to the company's factory for 3D printing. Since 2016, Microsoft has been using the i.materialise API to offer a cloud-based 3D print solution for Windows 10 users, and PTC did the same for Creo 4.0 software users.

Most of the company's straightforward additive manufacturing and rapid prototyping solutions are executed on the basis of single transaction contracts or purchase orders with the customer. For the company's Additive Manufacturing service of end-use parts, an entirely new approach to ensure parts are made according to agreed standards is required, for which the company has set processes to onboard new customers. An example of this is its dedicated aerospace manufacturing line, backed by certifications EN9100 and EASA Part 21G, through which the company is manufacturing plastic parts for, among others, Airbus's A350 XWB.

For the automotive manufacturers and their suppliers that use the company's RapidFit+ service, the fixtures are custom engineered by dedicated teams. The company's RapidFit+ customers, which include their quality departments, expect that fixtures meet high accuracy standards. Several automotive OEMs in Europe are considering the company's solution as a potential new standard, while a solid base of automotive Tier 1 suppliers in Europe has embraced RapidFit+ as one of their fixture solutions.

Competition

In the company's additive manufacturing solutions business, the company competes with a number of companies that provide industrial 3D printing services, including Cresilas, Prototal, Protolabs, and Quickparts.

Growth Strategy

In the company's Materialise Software segment, it intends to strengthen the market penetration of its software platform by continuing to gradually grow the strong position of its Magics 3D Print Suite in the market for print preparation software tools, including by offering its functionality through the cloud; and aggressively bringing its CO-AM platform to the market, offering to its customers both proprietary and third party functionalities that focus on volume production, including manufacturing execution systems, or MES, automated workflows for additive manufacturing and solutions, such as quality analysis tools and data security.

In the company's Materialise Medical segment, the company intends to continue to increase the penetration of its existing software products in the hospital market and to expand its portfolio of planning tools into new areas, such as cardiovascular and pulmonology. The company also intends to continue to develop and grow the sales of its personalized medical device portfolio, both directly and indirectly and in existing and new markets, including in particular in the CMF market.

In the company's Materialise Manufacturing segment, the company intends to continue to invest in the expansion and creation of certified 3D manufacturing environments that meet the high standards of the specialized segments of the industrial market, including the aerospace market.

Intellectual Property

As of December 31, 2022, the company's portfolio of intellectual property featured 449 issued patents and an additional 132 pending patent applications primarily in the United States, the European Union, and Japan. Of these, the company's issued patents expire between approximately 2020 and 2035, while the company's pending patent applications will generally remain in effect for 20 years from the date of the initial applications.

In addition, the company owns the trademark registrations for 'Materialise' and 'ACTech' and trademark registrations and pending applications for many of its services and software solutions in those territories where the company has substantial sales, including 'Streamics', 'Mimics', '3-matic', 'Inspector', 'Magics', 'RapidFit+', 'MGX by Materialise', 'Heartprint', 'ADaM', 'Engineering on Anatomy', 'Surgicase', 'Enlight', 'Mindware' and 'Phits', among others.

The company is party to various licenses and other arrangements that allow it to practice and improve its technology under a broad range of patents, patent applications and other intellectual property, including agreements with its collaboration partners, Zimmer Biomet, Enovis, DePuy Synthes, Lima, Mathys, Stryker, Corin, Siemens, FluidDa (FluidDa NV), HOYA, and PTC.

Seasonality

Historically, the revenue of the company's Materialise Software segment has been greater in the fourth quarter (year ended December 2022), as compared to the revenue of each of the other quarters. A number of its customers make their initial software purchase in the fourth quarter prior to the end of their annual budget cycle and tend to renew, extend or broaden the scope of their licenses on the anniversary date of their first purchase. In addition, the company has in the past often brought new releases on the market in the third quarter of the calendar year.

Research and Development

For the year ended December 31, 2022, the company's research and development expenses were € 37.6 million.

Regulatory / Environmental Matters

In the United States, the FDA under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act primarily regulates the company. In Europe and in other foreign jurisdictions in which the company sells its medical products, many of the regulations applicable to its medical devices and products in these countries are similar to those of the FDA. The company has obtained the Medical Device Single Audit Program certification.

History

Materialise NV was founded in 1990. The company was incorporated in Belgium in 1990 as a limited liability company under Belgian company law.