Men interact with a Baidu AI robot near the company’s logo at its headquarters in Beijing, China, April 23, 2021. REUTERS/Florence Lo/File Photo
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Aug 30 (Reuters) – China’s search engine giant Baidu Inc ( 9888.HK ) beat quarterly revenue estimates on Tuesday, supported by demand for its cloud and artificial intelligence-powered offerings.
Shares of the US-listed company rose 3.2% in premarket trading.
Although Baidu’s core ad sales continue to be soft, customers are signing up for its cloud services – a key area of global growth – as demand for web applications increases.
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Total revenue came in at 29.65 billion yuan ($4.43 billion) in the second quarter, compared with analysts’ average estimate of 29.30 billion yuan, according to Refinitiv data.
Revenue at Baidu’s AI Cloud unit rose 31% year over year in the reported quarter.
Compared to a year ago, the top line fell 5% lower, its first quarterly decline in two years.
Baidu posted a net profit of 3.64 billion yuan, or 1.49 yuan per American depositary share (ADS).
(1 Chinese yuan = $0.1449)
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Reporting from Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
