Head to Head Comparison: ExlService (NASDAQ:EXLS) versus SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN)

ExlService (NASDAQ:EXLS) and SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) are both mid-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends, valuation, institutional ownership, profitability and risk.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings for ExlService and SoundHound AI, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
ExlService	1	0	5	0	2.67
SoundHound AI	1	3	5	1	2.60

ExlService currently has a consensus price target of $41.50, indicating a potential upside of 39.87%. SoundHound AI has a consensus price target of $14.93, indicating a potential upside of 102.01%. Given SoundHound AI’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe SoundHound AI is more favorable than ExlService.

Risk & Volatility

ExlService has a beta of 0.82, suggesting that its stock price is 18% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, SoundHound AI has a beta of 2.56, suggesting that its stock price is 156% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

92.9% of ExlService shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 19.3% of SoundHound AI shares are owned by institutional investors. 3.7% of ExlService shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 8.8% of SoundHound AI shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares ExlService and SoundHound AI’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
ExlService	11.66%	28.50%	15.48%
SoundHound AI	-91.84%	-40.15%	-25.85%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares ExlService and SoundHound AI”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
ExlService	$2.09 billion	2.17	$251.02 million	$1.57	18.90
SoundHound AI	$168.92 million	18.93	-$14.01 million	($0.47)	-15.72

ExlService has higher revenue and earnings than SoundHound AI. SoundHound AI is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than ExlService, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

ExlService beats SoundHound AI on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About ExlService

ExlService Holdings, Inc. operates as a data analytics, and digital operations and solutions company in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Insurance, Healthcare, Analytics, and Emerging Business segments. It also provides digital operations and solutions and analytics-driven services, such as claims processing, premium and benefit administration, agency management, account reconciliation, policy research, underwriting support, new business acquisition, policy servicing, premium audit, surveys, billing and collection, commercial and residential survey, and customer service using digital technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced automation; digital customer acquisition services using a software-as-a-service delivery model through LifePRO and LISS platforms; subrogation services; and Subrosource software platform, an end-to-end subrogation platform. In addition, the company offers health care services related to care management, utilization management, disease management, payment integrity, revenue optimization, and customer engagement. Further, it provides financial planning and analysis, management reporting, forecasting and decision support, data management, regulatory reporting and risk, and compliance services; reservations, customer, and fulfilment services; freight billing, collections, claims management, freight audit, freight scheduling, supply chain management, and revenue assurance services; residential mortgage lending, title verification and validation, retail banking and credit cards, trust verification, commercial banking, and investment management; merchandising, pricing, and demand forecasting; and digital operations and solutions. The company offers predictive and prescriptive analytics in the areas of customer acquisition and lifecycle management. ExlService Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

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. The company's products also include CaiNET software that uses machine learning to enhance how domains work together to handle queries; CaiLAN software that arbitrates responses so users get answers from the right domain; Dynamic Interaction a real-time, multimodal customer service interface; Smart Ordering which offers an easy-to-understand voice assistant for restaurants; Employee Assist; automatic speech recognition; natural language understanding; wake words; custom domains; text-to-speech; and embedded voice solutions. The company was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.