SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) Sees Large Volume Increase – Should You Buy?

Shares of SoundHound AI, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOUN) saw an uptick in trading volume on Thursday . 38,257,907 shares traded hands during trading, a decline of 6% from the previous session’s volume of 40,647,559 shares.The stock last traded at $22.38 and had previously closed at $20.24.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

SOUN has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. LADENBURG THALM/SH SH reissued a “neutral” rating and issued a $7.00 target price on shares of SoundHound AI in a research report on Wednesday, November 13th. HC Wainwright lifted their price objective on shares of SoundHound AI from $8.00 to $26.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Monday, December 23rd. Barclays restated a “neutral” rating and set a $7.00 target price on shares of SoundHound AI in a report on Wednesday, November 13th. DA Davidson reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $9.50 price target on shares of SoundHound AI in a research note on Monday, September 30th. Finally, Wedbush increased their price objective on shares of SoundHound AI from $10.00 to $22.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Monday, December 16th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $12.07.

SoundHound AI Price Performance

The stock has a market capitalization of $8.86 billion, a P/E ratio of -66.53 and a beta of 3.03. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.13, a current ratio of 2.58 and a quick ratio of 2.58. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $10.66 and its 200-day simple moving average is $6.80.

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, November 12th. The company reported ($0.06) earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of ($0.07) by $0.01. SoundHound AI had a negative net margin of 163.58% and a negative return on equity of 55.58%. The company had revenue of $25.10 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $23.02 million. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned ($0.09) EPS. SoundHound AI’s revenue for the quarter was up 88.7% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that SoundHound AI, Inc. will post -0.38 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity

In other news, CEO Keyvan Mohajer sold 465,394 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $15.04, for a total value of $6,999,525.76. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 2,299,148 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $34,579,185.92. This represents a 16.83 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CTO Timothy Stonehocker sold 34,407 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, December 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $20.30, for a total transaction of $698,462.10. Following the sale, the chief technology officer now owns 796,581 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $16,170,594.30. This represents a 4.14 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 2,782,918 shares of company stock valued at $45,391,343 over the last three months. Insiders own 12.28% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On SoundHound AI

A number of institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. lifted its holdings in SoundHound AI by 7.9% during the 3rd quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 2,582,206 shares of the company’s stock worth $12,033,000 after purchasing an additional 189,109 shares during the last quarter. Carnegie Investment Counsel bought a new position in SoundHound AI during the 3rd quarter worth $4,193,000. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in shares of SoundHound AI by 9.1% during the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 7,193,599 shares of the company’s stock worth $33,529,000 after buying an additional 602,311 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC boosted its position in shares of SoundHound AI by 112.8% in the third quarter. FMR LLC now owns 49,038 shares of the company’s stock valued at $229,000 after acquiring an additional 25,989 shares during the period. Finally, Intech Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of SoundHound AI in the third quarter valued at about $305,000. Institutional investors own 19.28% of the company’s stock.

About SoundHound AI

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.