SoundHound AI, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOUN) Sees Large Growth in Short Interest

SoundHound AI, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOUN) saw a significant increase in short interest during the month of February. As of February 28th, there was short interest totalling 119,720,000 shares, an increase of 18.7% from the February 13th total of 100,850,000 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 71,490,000 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is currently 1.7 days. Approximately 34.2% of the company’s shares are sold short.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of equities analysts recently issued reports on SOUN shares. Wedbush boosted their price objective on SoundHound AI from $10.00 to $22.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Monday, December 16th. Northland Securities raised their price target on shares of SoundHound AI from $6.00 to $8.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, January 14th. DA Davidson boosted their price objective on shares of SoundHound AI from $9.50 to $13.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, February 28th. Cantor Fitzgerald raised shares of SoundHound AI to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, February 24th. Finally, HC Wainwright reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $26.00 target price on shares of SoundHound AI in a research report on Monday, March 3rd. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and three have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $12.86.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, insider James Ming Hom sold 36,771 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, December 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $20.30, for a total value of $746,451.30. Following the sale, the insider now owns 718,040 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $14,576,212. This represents a 4.87 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CEO Keyvan Mohajer sold 156,288 shares of SoundHound AI stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, December 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $20.20, for a total transaction of $3,157,017.60. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 2,021,666 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $40,837,653.20. This represents a 7.18 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 524,676 shares of company stock worth $10,638,694 over the last three months. 12.28% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of SoundHound AI

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of SoundHound AI by 35.6% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 32,031,662 shares of the company’s stock valued at $635,508,000 after acquiring an additional 8,402,881 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of SoundHound AI by 4.4% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 7,509,496 shares of the company’s stock worth $149,024,000 after purchasing an additional 315,897 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp raised its stake in SoundHound AI by 0.6% in the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 7,197,414 shares of the company’s stock valued at $33,540,000 after purchasing an additional 42,869 shares during the last quarter. Northern Trust Corp lifted its stake in shares of SoundHound AI by 10.0% in the fourth quarter. Northern Trust Corp now owns 2,906,245 shares of the company’s stock worth $57,660,000 after buying an additional 264,382 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of SoundHound AI by 5.6% during the 4th quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 2,725,693 shares of the company’s stock worth $54,078,000 after purchasing an additional 143,487 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 19.28% of the company’s stock.

SoundHound AI Stock Performance

Shares of SOUN stock opened at $9.70 on Wednesday. The company’s 50 day moving average is $12.48 and its 200 day moving average is $10.33. The company has a quick ratio of 2.58, a current ratio of 2.58 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.13. The firm has a market cap of $3.82 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -26.96 and a beta of 2.62. SoundHound AI has a 52-week low of $3.50 and a 52-week high of $24.98.

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, February 27th. The company reported ($0.69) EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.11) by ($0.58). The company had revenue of $34.54 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $33.70 million. SoundHound AI had a negative return on equity of 55.58% and a negative net margin of 163.58%. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that SoundHound AI will post -0.38 EPS for the current fiscal year.

SoundHound AI Company Profile

SoundHound AI, Inc develops independent voice artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that enables businesses across automotive, TV, and IoT, and to customer service industries to deliver high-quality conversational experiences to their customers. Its products include Houndify platform that offers a suite of Houndify tools to help brands build conversational voice assistants, such as Application Programming Interfaces (API) for text and voice queries, support for custom commands, extensive library of content domains, inclusive software development kit platforms, collaboration capabilities, diagnostic tools, and built-in analytics; SoundHound Chat AI that integrates with knowledge domains, pulling real-time data like weather, sports, stocks, flight status, and restaurants; and SoundHound Smart Answering is built to offer customer establishments custom AI-powered voice assistant.