SoundHound AI heads into its August 5 earnings report — now just eight days out — having snapped a two-week losing streak with a 4% gain on Monday, yet the structural tensions that have defined this name all month remain completely intact.
The borrow market tells the most extreme part of the story. Availability has been 0% every session across the entire 30-day window — not a single day of slack, not a hint of any share returning to the pool. Every unit in the lending pool is committed. Against that backdrop, cost to borrow closed the week at 14.6%, up 10% from seven days ago and nearly 24% above where it was a month prior. Short interest itself ticked up to 43.6% of the free float — a new high in the data window, and up from the 42.2% reported in both prior notes. That is a notable shift: while the prior two weeks showed a short book that refused to move in either direction, the past week delivered a clear addition of approximately 3.4 percentage points. New shorts are being added despite the locked borrow, which implies the marginal seller is paying a rapidly rising carry rate with no exit route if the stock moves against them. The ORTEX short score holds at 81.5, near the top of its range across the past two weeks.
Options positioning offers the clearest contrast to that crowded short book. Call-side dominance remains the story: the put/call ratio is running at 0.37, essentially in line with its 20-day average and close to the 52-week low of 0.31. There is no hedging spike ahead of August 5 — options traders are still leaning aggressively toward calls, not protection. That divergence between the short book and the options surface is the live tension on this stock: bears are paying rising fees to maintain a record crowded position while the call side of the ledger reflects ongoing bullish speculation on the same name.
The Street broadly agrees the stock is cheap at current levels, though the conviction behind that view is softening. Six analysts carry Buy or equivalent ratings with a mean price target around $13.14, implying roughly double from $6.41. The most recent target cuts — Northland trimming to $12 and Piper Sandler holding at $9 neutral — reflect the tension between genuine revenue growth and a valuation that remains stretched even after the year's decline. Bulls point to a debt-free balance sheet, revenue diversification across voice commerce and automotive, and meaningful margin expansion potential. Bears flag that the stock still trades at elevated forward revenue multiples for a company with negative earnings, negative ROA of around -19%, and a Piotroski F-score of just 3. The factor profile underscores the split: the 90-day EPS momentum and forward EPS revision scores rank near the top of the universe, while short score and days-to-cover rank near the bottom, producing a stock that simultaneously screens as a growth standout and an extreme short candidate.
Insider activity leans in one direction. The CEO, co-founders, CTO, and COO all sold shares in mid-June at around $7.46. The CFO sold in March at $6.79. Net insider sales over the 90-day window total roughly $4.1 million — not catastrophic in dollar terms given institutional float, but a uniform direction from the leadership team selling above current prices adds a quiet headwind to the bull narrative.
Earnings reactions from the most recent print are worth noting. The May 7 report produced a one-day decline of 5.2% and a five-day decline of 9.1%, while a follow-on event in May saw a one-day drop of 2.3% before recovering 8.2% over five days. The pattern is not cleanly one-directional, but the day-of move has consistently been negative. With peers ZETA and FIVN posting sharp single-day moves of their own this week — Zeta up 8.4% on the day and Five9 up 10.5% — AI software sentiment has been volatile in both directions heading into the August reporting cycle.
The print on August 5 will determine whether the locked borrow and rising carry costs resolve via a covering rally or whether the existing short book gets rewarded — that dynamic, rather than the revenue number itself, is now the primary lens for watching what happens next.
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