BEIJING (CHINA) – Recovery in advertising and an uptick in demand for cloud services and artificial intelligence helped China’s Baidu Inc to report quarterly revenue above the predictions of Wall Street on Wednesday.
The results come as the firm is bolstering its autonomous and smart transport technology to tap into the fast-growing electric-vehicle market and diversify revenue sources. It said last month that it would set up a smart electric vehicle (EV) firm with Geely.
“Our partnership is based on the belief that end-to-end integration of hardware and software will provide the best experience for autonomous driving,” said Baidu CEO and Chairman Robin Li.
Li also said the firm has decided a CEO and brand for the EV venture, adding that Baidu would bring out a new electric vehicle model in three years.
The Beijing firm’s investments in non-core businesses are also enabling it to fend off competition to its core search platforms from rivals such as Alibaba, Tencent Holdings and ByteDance. This comes in the wake of the domestic economy recovering.
The company said it is expecting current-quarter revenue between 26 billion yuan and 28.5 billion yuan, much above expectations of 25.79 billion yuan.
As per the IBES data from Refinitiv, its total revenue went up 5% to 30.26 billion yuan ($4.69 billion) in Q-4, topping analysts’ average estimate of 30.06 billion yuan.
Baidu’s US-listed shares, which have gained more than 70% in 2020, went up 3.4% to $317 in after-market trading.