Baidu fortunes turn around

Baidu (9888) reported a net profit of 5.83 billion yuan (HK$6.56 billion) in the first quarter of this year, marking a significant turnaround from the net loss of 885 million yuan in the same period last year, and the adjusted net profit witnessed a 48 percent increase, reaching 5.73 billion yuan.

During the same period, Baidu's total revenues reached 31.1 billion yuan - a 10 percent year-on-year increase.

Within this, revenue from Baidu's core business amounted to 23 billion yuan, showing an 8 percent year-on-year growth.

This figure includes online marketing revenue of 16.6 billion yuan - a 6 percent increase compared to the previous year - and non-online marketing revenue of 6.4 billion yuan, which saw an 11 percent yearly rise.

Furthermore, Baidu's online video platform, iQiyi , generated a revenue of 8.3 billion yuan, up 15 percent from a year ago.

During the quarter, iQiyi reported an average daily subscribing member count of 129 million. This is a notable increase compared to 101 million in the first quarter of 2022 and 112 million in the fourth quarter of 2022.

The cost of revenues for the company amounted to 15.2 billion yuan, reflecting a 3 percent decrease year-on-year. Additionally, the research and development expenses were 5.4 billion yuan, also a 3 percent yearly decrease.

In the first three months of this year, the firm's adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization jumped 48.1 percent year-on-year to 8.1 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, Baidu returned US$195 million (HK$1.52 billion) to shareholders in the first quarter this year.

And Baidu's autonomous ride-hailing service, Apollo Go, recorded about 660,000 rides during the January-March period. This represents a 236 percent rise compared to the same period in the previous year and a quarter-on-quarter growth of 18 percent.