SoundHound AI Sees Unusually Large Options Volume (NASDAQ:SOUN)

SoundHound AI, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOUN) was the target of some unusual options trading activity on Friday. Stock traders purchased 129,362 call options on the company. This is an increase of 84% compared to the average volume of 70,259 call options.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

SOUN has been the subject of several research reports. LADENBURG THALM/SH SH reaffirmed a “neutral” rating and set a $7.00 price objective on shares of SoundHound AI in a report on Wednesday, November 13th. Northland Securities upped their price target on shares of SoundHound AI from $5.50 to $6.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research report on Friday, August 9th. HC Wainwright raised their price objective on SoundHound AI from $7.00 to $8.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, November 14th. DA Davidson reiterated a “buy” rating and set a $9.50 price objective on shares of SoundHound AI in a research note on Monday, September 30th. Finally, Barclays reaffirmed a “neutral” rating and issued a $7.00 price objective on shares of SoundHound AI in a research report on Wednesday, November 13th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $7.64.

Insider Activity

In related news, CTO Timothy Stonehocker sold 20,337 shares of SoundHound AI stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, September 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $4.88, for a total value of $99,244.56. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief technology officer now owns 1,039,194 shares in the company, valued at $5,071,266.72. The trade was a 1.92 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CFO Nitesh Sharan sold 39,728 shares of SoundHound AI stock in a transaction on Friday, September 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $4.88, for a total transaction of $193,872.64. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 1,560,411 shares in the company, valued at $7,614,805.68. This represents a 2.48 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders have sold 337,275 shares of company stock valued at $1,811,044. Company insiders own 12.28% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of SoundHound AI

Institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Franklin Resources Inc. acquired a new position in SoundHound AI in the third quarter valued at about $177,000. Sanctuary Advisors LLC boosted its stake in shares of SoundHound AI by 13.8% in the 3rd quarter. Sanctuary Advisors LLC now owns 29,976 shares of the company’s stock valued at $140,000 after purchasing an additional 3,642 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake 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 purchasing an additional 602,311 shares during the period. MML Investors Services LLC acquired a new position in SoundHound AI in the third quarter valued at about $86,000. Finally, State Street Corp increased its stake in shares of 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 acquiring an additional 42,869 shares during the last quarter. 19.28% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

SoundHound AI Price Performance

SOUN stock traded up $1.47 on Friday, hitting $9.35. 54,919,661 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 35,266,168. SoundHound AI has a 1-year low of $1.62 and a 1-year high of $10.25. The company has a current ratio of 2.58, a quick ratio of 2.58 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.13. The stock has a market cap of $3.46 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -24.94 and a beta of 2.71. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $5.69 and a 200-day moving average of $5.09.

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) last issued its earnings results 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 return on equity of 55.58% and a negative net margin of 163.58%. 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 prior year, the firm posted ($0.09) EPS. The business’s revenue was up 88.7% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts forecast that SoundHound AI will post -0.38 EPS for the current fiscal year.

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.