Velo3D Is Back From the Dead — Now It Just Has to Prove It Deserves to Stay There

Some companies get a comeback arc. Velo3D got a full resurrection. Delisted from the NYSE in late 2024. Banished to the OTC wilderness. Forced into a 1-for-15 reverse split just to make the share count look respectable again. And then, in August 2025, it crawled back onto the Nasdaq via a modest $17.5 million IPO. That's not a turnaround story — that's a Lazarus story. And on August 11, the company finally gave investors a reason to believe the resurrection might actually hold.

The numbers that matter

Q2 2026 revenue jumped 52% year-over-year, and management didn't just meet expectations — it raised the bar, lifting full-year guidance to $65–75 million from a prior $60–70 million range. That follows a Q1 that already grew 48% to $13.8 million, on top of full-year 2025 revenue of $46 million. This is a company that's compounding growth quarter over quarter, not limping along on hope.

The margin story is arguably the more interesting one. Gross margin went from 7.5% in 2024 to 17.2% in 2025 — a 970-basis-point jump — and management is now talking about crossing 30% gross margin by year-end 2026, with positive EBITDA targeted for the back half of the year. If that lands, this stops being a story about a legacy SPAC wreck and starts being a story about a real manufacturing business with pricing power. A $31 million backlog gives some visibility that this isn't just a one-quarter fluke, and the customer list — SpaceX, Honeywell, Lam Research — is the kind of roster that suggests the "mission-critical metal 3D printing" pitch isn't just a marketing line. Space and defense demand is doing real work here.

Throw in a Russell 3000 and Russell Microcap Index addition back in June, and you've got the ingredients for passive-flow tailwinds on a stock that has historically suffered from thin, jumpy liquidity.

Now, the part where I stop being nice

Here's the thing about companies with a history of "severely missing SPAC projections" — a phrase literally used to describe VELO's track record — you don't get to just wave that away because one quarter looked good. This is a company that still isn't profitable on a GAAP basis. "Targeted" EBITDA positivity is not the same as achieved EBITDA positivity, and Velo3D has given the market plenty of reasons over the years to distrust its targets.

The capital structure is the real tell. A recent registered direct offering — 3.57 million shares — is a polite way of saying the company is still funding itself by printing more stock, which is a bit ironic for a printing company. Debt-to-equity sits at a genuinely alarming 34.6x, free cash flow is bleeding around $21.8 million, and short interest has doubled from roughly 20% to over 40% of the float. That's not background noise — that's the market actively betting this doesn't work. When a stock also just punched above its upper Bollinger Band, as VELO did on August 4, that's often less "breakout" and more "get ready for the snapback."

And don't forget: Velo3D still enjoys "emerging growth company" status through the end of 2026, meaning reduced disclosure requirements right when investors most need transparency into whether the margin targets are real or aspirational.

The verdict

This is a binary stock dressed up as a growth story. The bull case — accelerating revenue, margin inflection, space-sector tailwinds, index inclusion — is legitimate and the Q2 print gave it real fuel. The bear case — chronic dilution, negative operating margins, a debt load that would frighten most CFOs, and a short base that's doubled in conviction — is just as legitimate, and it's the one with actual scar tissue behind it.

Price targets floating around range from $6.25 on the bear side to $20 on the bull side over a three-month window, which tells you everything about the uncertainty here. Velo3D earned its way back onto Nasdaq. Now it has to earn the multiple. Watch the next few quarters of actual EBITDA, not the guidance slide — because this company has broken more promises than it's kept, and the ghost of the SPAC era is still very much in the room.