China’s leading search engine, Baidu, is doing quite well as the company beat its own revenue estimates for the quarter, reports Reuters.
What was once thought of by many as a search engine tool has now ventured into the world of cloud services. But that’s not all as we’ve seen it take a leap forward in driving and robotaxis too. This is what we call diversity at its best.
On Thursday, the company made a shocking announcement about its earnings and how it managed to beat analysts’ forecasts for this current quarter.
The news comes as COVID-19 resurfaces in the country with lockdowns and remote working booming. Therefore, as you can already imagine, these restrictions have boosted the demand for AI and cloud-related services.
This news further increased the company’s share of the US market by almost 5%. This is despite the company sending warnings that it expects to see more challenges in the second quarter.
The company’s revenue over the past three months increased by 1% to 28.41 billion. Yes, this is the slowest growth in the last six quarters, but again it exceeded expectations of major analysts who expected estimates to be worth around 27.82 billion.
Baidu released results of a net loss of CNY 885 million due to the ongoing economic downturn in the country as the pandemic flared up again in China.
Just a year ago, we saw the same company surpass a profit of 25.65 billion.
Recently, the company’s spokesperson mentioned in a statement that they had faced a number of hurdles since mid-March. And due to the uprising of the pandemic, things aren’t looking great right now either. Moreover, he added that the challenges are many and they also need to increase and pressure their upcoming operations.
On the other hand, the company explained how revenue from its Baidu Core division grew, and this included online ad sales as well as non-advertising sales through AI-powered goods and services like cloud AI. The numbers for this had increased by almost 4%.
As for the company’s online revenue, it’s been down 4% to around $15.7 billion so far.
As the company’s chief financial officer mentioned recently, the second quarter will be a major hurdle and the company is well prepared for the result.
In other good news, the company’s revenue for its AI cloud services jumped a massive 45%, making it one of the fastest growing areas of the business.
What was once a search engine tool is now expanding into the world of cloud services, which speaks volumes about the company’s strong growth and efforts to expand. Remember that the competition in the Chinese market is intense and anyone who takes the lead and improves their ad business or search platform is definitely a big step.
Last month, the company made headlines when it received permission to operate robotaxis without the inclusion of humans in the driver’s seats. These were allowed on the roads, making history for the first time.
Photo: N509FZ / Wiki
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