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
Aug 30 (Reuters) – Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc ( 9888.HK ) beat quarterly revenue estimates on Tuesday, boosted by demand for its cloud and artificial intelligence-powered offerings.
Shares of the U.S.-listed company rose 3.2 percent in premarket trade.
While Baidu’s core advertising sales remain soft, as demand for Internet applications grows, customers are signing up for its cloud services – a key area of growth globally.
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Total revenue stood at 29.65 billion yuan ($4.43 billion) in the second quarter, beating analysts’ average estimate of 29.30 billion yuan, Refinitiv data showed.
Revenue at Baidu’s AI Cloud division grew 31 percent year over year in the reporting quarter.
Compared to year-ago numbers, the top line was down 5%, the first quarter of growth 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 USD)
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Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
