There is some good news for Baidu, the Chinese search engine leader and advertising provider, as they’ve released some financials for the first quarter of the year. In the report, it is stated that the total revenues have totaled $1.53 billion USD at $1.24 earnings per share. This means that there has been almost a 60% increase in revenue from the previous year. This information has beat the expectations on both fronts. It was expected that Baidu would report only $1.5 billion in revenue at $1.03 earnings per share. That’s certainly got to feel good.
It was also reported by Baidu that they have had about 446,000 active online marketing customers during the quarter, which was an 8.8 percent increase from the previous year, although it was a 1.1 percent decrease from the fourth quarter of 2013.
Baidu’s growth could be benefited from the fact that it is a “cross-platform service”, meaning that it can be used by mobile users and the rapid mobile adoption by advertisers.
The chairman and chief executive officer of Baidu said in the statement, Robin Li, stated “Our focus remained on growing our market-leading offerings in search and app distribution, and we continued to broaden our platform in newer areas like location-based services.”
Also, Li added, “As the Internet disrupts more and more traditional industries, and mobile’s importance continues to grow, Baidu is uniquely positioned with our competitive advantage as a leading cross-platform information gateway with world class technology. We’re confident our focused approach to investment will continue to drive sustainable growth in the quarters ahead.”
There is still the expectation that Baidu will still be growing from this point,and expects revenues to range from $1.90 to 1.95 billion in the second quarter of 2014.