The Cautious Euphoria in Baidu Earnings (BIDU)
We had said in our detailed preview that this was a make or break quarter for Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU). So far it looks like the investment community is taking it as a ‘make it’ quarter. The leader of online…
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The Chinese search giant ended the last quarter with $671.1 million in cash and cash equivalents. Traffic acquisition cost was 16.0% of total revenues versus 14.6% a year earlier and versus 15.3% in the earlier sequential quarter.
Online marketing revenues were $184.6 million, a gain of 39.8% from a year earlier; the company had about 223,000 active online marketing customers, up about 13.2% from a year earlier and a 3.2% increase from the previous quarter.
Baidu had a mysterious drop at the end of the trading day and shares closed down 1.85% at $435.01. In the after-hours session we have shares trading up 9% at $471.84. We’ll have to double-check this, but anything above $470.25 looks like an all-time high. Until the data is heard from the conference call where the company can forecast its win from the Google-China fight, we’d consider this one unfinished business.
JON C. OGG
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