Chinese tech company Baidu posts fastest quarterly revenue growth in two years
Chinese tech company Baidu posted its fastest quarterly year-over-year revenue growth in two years, up 15% in the second quarter thanks to ad growth, according to data from Refinitiv.
U.S.-traded Baidu shares rose more than 4% in pre-market trading.
The company’s revenue was 34.1 billion yuan (4.7 billion US dollars), compared to the expected 33.28 billion yuan.
Baidu’s core business performance
Within Baidu’s core business, online marketing revenue increased 15% to 19.6 billion yuan in the second quarter, while offline marketing revenue increased 12% to 6.8 billion yuan.
Profit on a US non-GAAP certificate of deposit was 22.55 yuan, compared to 15.79 yuan in the same period last year.
“In the second quarter of 2023, Baidu accelerated revenue and earnings growth thanks to the strong performance of its online marketing business and operating leverage,” Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li said in a statement.
“Generative AI and large language models have tremendous transformative power in many industries, presenting us with significant market opportunities,” he added.
Baidu is promoting a Chinese-language alternative to ChatGPT called “Ernie bot” which is open to the public and launched in March.
Last week, Baidu announced that 5 “Ernie bot” plugins, including quick text-to-video conversion and PDF search, will become more accessible to users.
Last week, Baidu also introduced an AI-powered assistant that can help with tasks like booking appointments, booking flights and hotels. It wasn’t immediately clear how users could get the spin-off.
The company is also looking to expand the use of AI in the automotive sector. This month, the company announced a strategic agreement with state-owned Changan Automobile to develop autonomous driving capabilities based on the artificial intelligence model behind the Baidu Ernie robot.
Robotaxis business
Baidu also operates self-driving taxis under the “Apollo Go” brand in China. In the second quarter, Baidu said it had made about 714,000 robotic taxi rides, up from 660,000 rides in the first quarter.
The company was allowed to start charging for public taxi rides in Beijing in November 2021. Drivers can book rides, which are usually heavily subsidized, through the app.
Most of the automated taxis available in parts of many major Chinese cities are still manned.
In June, the company said it had received permission to operate unmanned robotic taxis in suburban Shenzhen. This followed a similar authorization in August 2022 to remove human personnel from some robot taxis in parts of Wuhan and Chongqing.
