Steven Kent Rockwell, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the ExOne Company (XONE), Interviews with the Wall Street Transcript

67 WALL STREET, New York - February 20, 2014 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its 2013 IPOs Report offering a timely review of companies new to the stock market. This special feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth, detailed interviews with CEOs and senior executives of new public companies. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.

Topics covered: Initial Public Offerings - IPOs

Companies include: ExOne Company (XONE), and many others.

In the following excerpt from the 2013 IPOs Report, the Chairman and CEO of the ExOne Company (XONE) gives a detailed strategic plan for his company for investors:

TWST: Could we begin with a brief overview of ExOne's business?

Mr. Rockwell: ExOne is currently in the business of providing 3D printing machines for industrial applications with a variety of material sets on a global basis. In addition to designing, making and selling the machines ourselves, we also have a service-bureau concept, which we call our production service centers or PSCs. In our PSCs, we take the output of our actual operating machines and then deliver the finished goods to our customers. Quite frequently, we find that by doing that, we're educating the customers as to the capability of the machines. That sometimes assists in the actual sale of a machine to a customer, because they want to be able to analyze the final product and the benefit of that product output.

TWST: Is the service bureau a newer part of your business or has that been around for a while?

Mr. Rockwell: In all honesty, in an innovative environment such as the one we're in where you've got basically a disruptive technology, inasmuch as most people don't know it - and it will change the way they do business - it's what we call the demand-push concept. With such a concept, you have to push the product out the door and get them to understand the value it presents to them as a service to make their business a better business. So we created the production service centers to augment the sale of machines.

In a small and innovative market like we are working in, we are also learning that you have to be strategically very adaptive, because we're now finding that some of those service markets actually have higher margins and better opportunities for us to sell services than to just sell machines. I've had other people in the industry that are really savvy say, "You know, you should never sell a single machine, you should only operate them for the customers." I don't think that's a viable concept in the industrial sector. Certainly, some of the major companies we're working with a lot are the Fortune 200 type companies, and they want to own the machines and do it themselves, including in the automotive sector. So it's a combination of the two.

TWST: Does the service bureau then allow you to reach a smaller-size customer than the machine sales do?

Mr. Rockwell: In certain cases, yes. If we do that, some of the smaller customers don't have to make the investment. And then there are certain large customers - such as Sikorsky, who's one of our bigger service-bureau customers right now - where they don't ever want to own anything. They only want to get the final finished component, the finished product that we can make, delivered to them in the most cost-advantageous and timely manner. There are certain customers that simply want to buy the output, and what we're learning is probably transitioning us more and more toward the service side of the business rather than the transactional side, which involves just selling the machine and then selling the services that go into that machine.

TWST: Are your competitors doing the same thing you're doing with metals, or is this something that you're doing and they have not done?

Mr. Rockwell: We're in a bit of a unique position, because competitively, we don't have anybody that's selling binder-jetting technology in the same manner that we are...

For more of this interview and many others visit the Wall Street Transcript - a unique service for investors and industry researchers - providing fresh commentary and insight through verbatim interviews with CEOs, portfolio managers and research analysts. This special issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.