Baidu.com Soars (BIDU)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

Baidu_logoBaidu.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU) just posted its quarterly earnings report, and our conversions are into US Dollars rather than Chinese RMB.

The Chinese internet search giant said operating income rose about 86% and showed $1.11 net EPS and $1.23 non-GAAP EPS on a 100% gain in revenues to $117.0 million.  Estimates were $0.98 EPS on $112.5 million.  Baidu noted that Traffic acquisition costs (TAC) were $14.8 million. That TAC weighting is about 12.7% of total revenues, above the 11.2% from last quarter.

As far as guidance, the company sees Q3 total revenues ranging from$132 million to $136 million, a gain of 82% to 88% from Q3-2007 and a13% to 16% rise from this last quarter  just reported.  First Call hasrevenue projections at $135.26 million in revenues.  We’d note thatthis guidance does already reflect the anticipation of the temporarilyaltered user behavior during the Beijing Summer Olympic Games.

Baidu also said that active online marketing customers during thesecond quarter grew to over 181,000, an increase of 12.4 % from theprevious quarter.

Baidu.com shares closed down 1.25% today at $288.70.  In after-hoursright after the report we are seeing shares trade up almost $30.00north of $317.00 on active trading.  Its 52-week trading range is $161.00 to $429.19.

The last short interest data from NASDAQ showed a short interest ofjust over 4 million shares, although that is actually the lowest shortinterest since mid-March.

Jon C. Ogg
July 23, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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