China’s largest Internet search engine provider, Baidu said its revenue for the second quarter of the year surged by 32% as it benefits from AI-powered monetization capabilities.
Total revenues for the period were RMB 26.0 billion ($3.93 billion), increasing 32% year over year. Mobile revenue represented 77% of total net revenues, compared to 72% for the second quarter of 2017. Total revenues of Baidu Core were RMB 20.0 billion ($3.03 billion), increasing 28% year over year.
Operating income was RMB 5.4 billion ($819 million), increasing 29% year over year. Operating margin was 21%, similar to the second quarter of 2017.
“We had another strong quarter in Q2 with search exhibiting robust revenue growth driven by AI-powered monetization capabilities and Baidu feed continuing strong traffic and monetization momentum,” said Robin Li, Chairman and CEO of Baidu. “On DuerOS, we are excited about the newly launched Xiaodu series speakers and the adoption of DuerOS, which handled over 400 million queries in June 2018, almost doubling the workload again over a three-month span. On Apollo, we worked with King Long Motor and Neolix Technology to launch two fully autonomous L4 vehicles. These strong results are testament of our ability to focus and execute on our strategy to solidify Baidu’s mobile foundation and lead in AI.”
“Baidu delivered a solid second quarter with revenues growing 32% year over year to RMB 26.0 billion and non-GAAP operating profit growing 31% to RMB 6.5 billion,” said Herman Yu, CFO of Baidu. “We continue to increase our investments in AI-powered businesses with strong synergies and divest from non-core businesses. This has resulted in an acceleration of our revenue growth and allowed us to redeploy capital raised from non-core business divestures to create long-term shareholder value and increase return on capital.”
