SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) Shares Up 6.2% – Here’s What Happened

SoundHound AI, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOUN)’s stock price shot up 6.2% during mid-day trading on Monday . The company traded as high as $7.76 and last traded at $7.33. 32,943,893 shares traded hands during mid-day trading, an increase of 20% from the average session volume of 27,530,955 shares. The stock had previously closed at $6.90.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research firms have recently issued reports on SOUN. HC Wainwright dropped their target price on SoundHound AI from $26.00 to $20.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, March 2nd. LADENBURG THALM/SH SH raised SoundHound AI to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, May 6th. Piper Sandler reaffirmed a “neutral” rating and set a $9.00 price objective (down from $11.00) on shares of SoundHound AI in a report on Friday, February 27th. Finally, DA Davidson reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $14.00 price objective on shares of SoundHound AI in a report on Wednesday, April 22nd. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, five have given a Buy rating, three have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $14.93.

SoundHound AI Stock Up 6.2%

The stock has a fifty day moving average of $7.91 and a two-hundred day moving average of $8.92. The stock has a market cap of $3.17 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -15.60 and a beta of 2.56.

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, May 7th. The company reported ($0.06) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.05) by ($0.01). SoundHound AI had a negative return on equity of 40.15% and a negative net margin of 91.84%.The business had revenue of $44.20 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $42.56 million. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned ($0.06) EPS. The company’s revenue was up 51.7% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts expect that SoundHound AI, Inc. will post -0.45 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity

In related news, CFO Nitesh Sharan sold 44,027 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Friday, March 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $6.79, for a total transaction of $298,943.33. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 1,661,121 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $11,279,011.59. This represents a 2.58% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, insider James Ming Hom sold 31,019 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Friday, March 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $6.79, for a total value of $210,619.01. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 772,364 shares in the company, valued at $5,244,351.56. This trade represents a 3.86% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders have sold a total of 307,973 shares of company stock valued at $2,091,110 over the last three months. 8.84% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of SoundHound AI

Several large investors have recently bought and sold shares of SOUN. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its holdings in SoundHound AI by 16.4% in the third quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 43,457,569 shares of the company’s stock valued at $698,798,000 after purchasing an additional 6,132,648 shares during the last quarter. Morgan Stanley grew its holdings in SoundHound AI by 48.1% in the fourth quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 8,987,522 shares of the company’s stock valued at $89,606,000 after purchasing an additional 2,917,280 shares during the last quarter. UBS Group AG grew its holdings in SoundHound AI by 77.6% in the fourth quarter. UBS Group AG now owns 6,124,283 shares of the company’s stock valued at $61,059,000 after purchasing an additional 2,676,707 shares during the last quarter. Voloridge Investment Management LLC grew its holdings in SoundHound AI by 2,259.7% in the fourth quarter. Voloridge Investment Management LLC now owns 2,199,511 shares of the company’s stock valued at $21,929,000 after purchasing an additional 2,106,298 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Jump Financial LLC acquired a new stake in SoundHound AI in the third quarter valued at $21,679,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 19.28% of the company’s stock.

About SoundHound AI

SoundHound AI, Inc is a voice AI and conversational intelligence company specializing in speech recognition, natural language understanding and sound identification technologies. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, the company initially gained recognition with its music discovery app before pivoting to enterprise-grade voice AI solutions. Over the years, SoundHound AI has built a comprehensive platform that enables developers and businesses to embed conversational intelligence into a wide range of products and services.

The company’s core offering is the Houndify voice AI platform, which provides customizable speech-to-meaning technology, domain-specific natural language understanding and text-to-speech capabilities.