Beijing: Baidu Inc posted quarterly revenue that topped analysts’ estimates as it pushes into new businesses such as news aggregation to overcome government restrictions on web advertising at China’s biggest search engine.
Revenue for the fourth quarter was 18.21bn yuan ($2.62bn), compared with estimates for 18.17bn yuan, Baidu said in a statement. Net income, adjusted for certain items, was 4.61bn yuan, compared with the 2.52bn yuan average of analyst estimates. New President Qi Lu is preparing to reshape Baidu and expand products using artificial intelligence as the government cracks down on advertising, especially from the lucrative medical sector.
While Baidu remains the biggest search engine in the country, smaller rivals like Sogou as well as giants Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings are gaining ground. While Baidu has to fend off these challengers, it also has to grapple with decelerating growth. Annual revenue climbed at the slowest-ever pace.
"Baidu is at the forefront of AI development in China as it has accumulated a large database of text, image and audio in optimizing its deep-learning based algorithm," analysts at Jefferies Group led by Jessie Guo said in a report.
