{"id":8480,"date":"2024-11-24T09:48:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-24T09:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/baidu-q3-2024-earnings\/"},"modified":"2024-11-24T09:48:00","modified_gmt":"2024-11-24T09:48:00","slug":"baidu-q3-2024-earnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=8480","title":{"rendered":"Baidu Q3 2024 earnings:"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>BEIJING \u2014 Chinese tech giant <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"RegularArticle-QuoteInBody-1\">Baidu<span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"><\/span><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span> on Thursday posted a 3% annual drop in third-quarter revenue, nevertheless beating market expectations amid AI cloud growth.<\/p>\n<p>The revenue print came in at $4.78 billion for the quarter ending on Sept. 30. Net income for the period rose by 14% to $1.09 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Baidu noted a 12% surge in its non-online marketing revenue to the equivalent of $1.1 billion, mainly driven by its artificial intelligence cloud business.<\/p>\n<p>The company&#8217;s U.S.-traded shares fell 2.3% at 08:42 a.m. ET in premarket trading following the release of its results.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what analysts expected the company to report for the quarter, according to LSEG estimates:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Revenue: $4.63 billion<\/li>\n<li>Net income: $857.17 million<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Baidu had reported revenue of 34.45 billion yuan ($4.75 billion) and net income of 6.68 billion yuan for the <a href=\"https:\/\/ir.baidu.com\/static-files\/f4006310-1a98-4d86-89a1-edfea1ef5d0e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">third quarter of 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Beijing-based Baidu operates one of the major web browser search engines in China, along with a frequently used maps app. The company also sells cloud computing services. Online marketing drives a significant portion of the firm&#8217;s revenue.<\/p>\n<p>Online ad spend from small and medium-sized businesses remained weak in the third quarter without noticeable improvement in the weeks since, management said on an earnings call. They forecast that China&#8217;s stimulus announcements, which began in late September, will require time to take effect.<\/p>\n<p>The growth in the AI cloud business offset &#8220;ongoing weakness&#8221; in Baidu&#8217;s online marketing stream, CEO Robin Li said in the earnings release, also commenting on the performance of the company&#8217;s Ernie generative AI model and chatbot.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our strong AI capabilities are gaining broader market recognition, as evidenced by increasing adoption of Ernie,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Baidu has promoted its Ernie chatbot as a local alternative to OpenAI&#8217;s ChatGPT, which isn&#8217;t available in China. Ernie bot now has 430 million users, and programs access its underlying AI model around 1.5 billion times a day, more than double the 600 million rate in August, Baidu said last week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Despite the near-term pressures, we remain steadfast in our AI-focused strategy and are confident in our long-term trajectory,&#8221; Li said Thursday. &#8220;As we further scale AI, we are emboldened to find how it can drive innovations and create value for consumers, enterprises and society at large.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>During an earnings call later in the day, he added that he expects generative AI can turn Baidu search into the &#8220;new killer app in the age of AI.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Li said that about one-third of Baidu&#8217;s code is now generated by AI.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, generative AI is growing its revenue contribution to Baidu&#8217;s AI cloud business, reaching 11% in the third quarter, the company&#8217;s management said Thursday \u2014 up from 9% in the previous quarter and also up from 5% in the fourth quarter of last year, when Baidu started tracking generative AI revenue.<\/p>\n<p>The company this month also announced that its <a href=\"https:\/\/mp.weixin.qq.com\/s\/tJOlppH4hvLbMKEHBEX3yw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Xiaodu AI Glasses<\/a> will begin sales in the first half of next year. The wearable has at least one camera and uses Ernie&#8217;s AI capabilities and Baidu&#8217;s maps and search functions. While Baidu hasn&#8217;t revealed a price, the product is widely expected to be a Chinese alternative to Meta&#8217;s popular <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpointresearch.com\/insight\/post-insight-research-notes-blogs-rayban-meta-crosses-1million-mark-success-indicates-promising-future-for-lightweight-ar-glasses\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ray-Ban smart glasses<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Baidu announced a management rotation last month, with Junjie He, previously head of the mobile ecosystem group, <a href=\"https:\/\/ir.baidu.com\/news-releases\/news-release-details\/baidu-announces-management-rotation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">becoming the company&#8217;s interim Chief Financial Officer<\/a>, while former CFO Rong Luo assumed leadership of the mobile division.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;AI Cloud continued to show healthy and sustainable development in the third quarter,&#8221; he said in the earnings release. &#8220;Meanwhile, Apollo Go continued to make operational strides, underpinning our confidence in the validity of the fully autonomous ride hailing business model.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Apollo Go, which operates Baidu&#8217;s robotaxi business, reported a 20% year-on-year surge in rides in the third quarter. The average number of rides a month rose to 329,333 during the third quarter, up from 287,500 in the first half of the year, according to CNBC calculations.<\/p>\n<p>Li told investors that the company is actively exploring Apollo Go&#8217;s international expansion, but did not specify locations or a timeframe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2024\/11\/21\/baidu-q3-2024-earnings.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEIJING \u2014 Chinese tech giant Baidu on Thursday posted a 3% annual drop in third-quarter revenue, nevertheless beating market expectations amid AI cloud growth. The revenue print came in at $4.78 billion for the quarter ending on Sept. 30. Net income for the period rose by 14% to $1.09 billion. Baidu noted a 12% surge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[2966,1095],"class_list":{"0":"post-8480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-finance-news","8":"tag-baidu","9":"tag-earnings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}