Baidu CEO Robin Li has ‘more confidence’ for next year after company reports better-than-expected third quarter results on growth in video, cloud services
- The Nasdaq-listed company reported third-quarter revenue of 28.08 billion yuan (US$4 billion), just shy of the 28.2 billion yuan revenue in the same quarter last year
Baidu chief executive Robin Li expressed “more confidence” in the company’s 2020 outlook after the Chinese search giant reported better-than-expected results in the quarter ended September.
“What’s especially noteworthy is that we achieved these positive results despite various economic uncertainties. This indicates the changes we initiated this year are paying off,” Li said in a letter circulated among employees on Thursday.
“We have realised a balance between innovation, speed and efficiency, which has led to the stable improvement of our business operations and more confidence in our 2020 outlook.”
Li’s remarks, posted in an internal letter, a copy of which was obtained by the South China Morning Post, came after the operator of China’s largest search engine has been navigating through macro headwinds and structural challenges to its core search business brought about by competition from peers.
The Nasdaq-listed company reported third-quarter revenue of 28.08 billion yuan (US$4 billion), just shy of the 28.2 billion yuan revenue in the same quarter last year but still beating the Wall Street consensus of 27.49 billion yuan.
While online marketing revenues fell 9 per cent year on year to 20.4 billion yuan, other revenues increased 34 per cent to 7.6 billion year over year, driven mainly by the strong growth in membership of the iQIYI video service, cloud services and smart devices.
