Northland Capmk Upgrades SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) to "Strong-Buy"

Key Points

• SoundHound AI has been upgraded from a "hold" to a "strong-buy" rating by Northland Capital Markets, indicating increased confidence in the company's stock.
• Despite this upgrade, several analysts have lowered their price targets for the stock, with DA Davidson reducing it from $13.00 to $10.00 and HC Wainwright from $26.00 to $18.00.
• In its latest earnings report, SoundHound AI reported a revenue increase of 216.3% year-over-year, but missed EPS estimates by $0.13, reflecting ongoing challenges for the company.

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN - Get Free Report) was upgraded by stock analysts at Northland Capmk from a "hold" rating to a "strong-buy" rating in a note issued to investors on Friday,Zacks.com reports.

SOUN has been the topic of several other research reports. Piper Sandler reaffirmed a "neutral" rating and set a $12.00 price target on shares of SoundHound AI in a research report on Monday, July 14th. Wall Street Zen lowered SoundHound AI from a "hold" rating to a "sell" rating in a research report on Saturday. Northland Securities raised SoundHound AI from a "market perform" rating to an "outperform" rating and set a $14.50 price target on the stock in a research report on Friday. DA Davidson lowered their price target on SoundHound AI from $13.00 to $10.00 and set a "buy" rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, April 14th. Finally, HC Wainwright reduced their target price on SoundHound AI from $26.00 to $18.00 and set a "buy" rating for the company in a research note on Monday, May 12th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a hold rating, four have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, SoundHound AI has an average rating of "Moderate Buy" and an average price target of $11.44.

SoundHound AI Trading Up 26.4%

Shares of NASDAQ:SOUN traded up $2.83 during trading on Friday, hitting $13.55. 206,161,228 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 36,324,236. The stock has a market cap of $5.44 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -21.51 and a beta of 2.57. SoundHound AI has a fifty-two week low of $4.32 and a fifty-two week high of $24.98. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $10.76 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $10.49.

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN - Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, August 7th. The company reported ($0.19) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.06) by ($0.13). The company had revenue of $42.68 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $32.88 million. SoundHound AI had a negative return on equity of 77.38% and a negative net margin of 171.81%. The firm's revenue for the quarter was up 216.3% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm earned ($0.11) EPS. As a group, research analysts predict that SoundHound AI will post -0.38 EPS for the current year.

Insider Transactions at SoundHound AI

In other SoundHound AI news, CEO Keyvan Mohajer sold 254,376 shares of the company's stock in a transaction on Friday, June 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $9.36, for a total value of $2,380,959.36. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 1,749,790 shares in the company, valued at $16,378,034.40. The trade was a 12.69% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, COO Michael Zagorsek sold 117,180 shares of the company's stock in a transaction on Friday, June 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $9.36, for a total transaction of $1,096,804.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer owned 1,346,455 shares in the company, valued at approximately $12,602,818.80. This represents a 8.01% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last 90 days, insiders sold 961,289 shares of company stock valued at $9,247,847. Corporate insiders own 9.17% of the company's stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in SOUN. JPMorgan Chase & Co. grew its holdings in SoundHound AI by 5.8% in the 4th quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 286,817 shares of the company's stock valued at $5,690,000 after buying an additional 15,672 shares in the last quarter. O Shaughnessy Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in SoundHound AI in the 4th quarter valued at $213,000. Alliancebernstein L.P. grew its holdings in SoundHound AI by 6.8% in the 4th quarter. Alliancebernstein L.P. now owns 317,125 shares of the company's stock valued at $6,292,000 after buying an additional 20,155 shares in the last quarter. Franklin Resources Inc. grew its holdings in SoundHound AI by 6.0% in the 4th quarter. Franklin Resources Inc. now owns 40,191 shares of the company's stock valued at $797,000 after buying an additional 2,291 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company MN lifted its position in shares of SoundHound AI by 45.9% during the 4th quarter. Wells Fargo & Company MN now owns 410,040 shares of the company's stock valued at $8,135,000 after acquiring an additional 128,982 shares during the period. 19.28% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.