Baidu, Inc. BIDU reported better-than-expected first-quarter 2025 results, with adjusted earnings and total revenues topping the Zacks Consensus Estimate. On a year-over-year basis, the bottom line tumbled while the top line grew.
The quarterly performance reflects increased contributions from the company’s Baidu Core segment, which was driven by the strong performance of its AI Cloud business, which surged 42% year over year. The uptrend in its AI Cloud business highlights the growing market recognition of its distinctive strength in offering full-stack AI products and solutions with a highly competitive price-performance advantage. Moreover, under its robotaxi business, Apollo Go’s international expansion was encouraging. It entered Dubai and Abu Dhabi, reinforcing BIDU’s commitment to bringing safe, comfortable and affordable autonomous ride-hailing services to global markets.
Per Junjie He, Interim CFO of Baidu, “AI Cloud continued its robust growth in the first quarter, which provides solid support to our overall revenue while we accelerate the AI transformation across our mobile ecosystem. Looking ahead, we are strongly committed to investing in AI to translate our technological strengths into sustainable long-term growth.”
However, increased costs and elevated selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses hurt the bottom line of the company during the quarter.
BIDU stock slipped 4.3% during yesterday’s trading session following the earnings release.
Inside Baidu’s Q1 Headlines
The company reported adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $2.55, which surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.96 by 30.1% but declined 7% from the year-ago period.
Total revenues of $4.47 billion also topped the consensus mark of $4.3 billion by 4.1% and grew 3% year over year.
Baidu, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise
Baidu, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise
Baidu, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Baidu, Inc. Quote
Revenues from the Baidu Core segment increased year over year by 7% to $3.51 billion. Under this segment, online marketing revenues declined 6% to $2.21 billion while non-online marketing revenues soared 40% to $1.3 billion year over year.
Revenues from the iQIYI segment declined 9% from the prior-year quarter to $990 million.
BIDU’s Operating Highlights
The SG&A expenses of the company grew 10% year over year to $815 million due to an increase in channel spending and promotional marketing expenses, partially offset by a decrease in personnel-related expenses. Research and development expenses declined 15% from a year ago to $626 million.
Adjusted operating income of $735 million was down 20% year over year. Adjusted operating margin of 16% contracted 500 basis points (bps) year over year from 21%.
Adjusted EBITDA during the quarter was $993 million, down 13% year over year, with adjusted EBITDA margin contracting 400 bps to 22%.
BIDU’s Financial Glimpse
As of March 31, 2025, Baidu had cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash of $6.81 billion compared with $5 billion at 2024-end. Long-term loans as of the first quarter were $2.22 billion, slightly up from $2.14 billion at 2024-end.
Since the beginning of the first quarter of 2025, the company returned $445 million to its shareholders, bringing the cumulative repurchases to $2.1 billion under its 2023 share repurchase program.
Baidu’s Other Business Updates
Under Corporate business, in March 2025, the company launched ERNIE 4.5, its first flagship foundation model with multimodal capabilities, and ERNIE X1, its debut reasoning model. Also, it launched the revamped versions of ERNIE 4.5 Turbo and ERNIE X1 Turbo in April 2025.
Under the AI Cloud business, the company enhanced its MaaS platform, Qianfan, with an expanded model library and more comprehensive toolkits, extending support for the training and fine-tuning of multimodal and reasoning models to further facilitate AI-native application development. Furthermore, in April 2025, Baidu released the 3.0 version of its deep learning framework, PaddlePaddle.
Under the Intelligent Driving business, Baidu’s autonomous ride-hailing service, Apollo Go, entered the Dubai and Abu Dhabi markets in March 2025. Notably, Apollo Go provided more than 1.4 million rides in the first quarter, up 75% year over year, and as of May 2025, the cumulative rides provided to the public by Apollo Go surpassed 11 million.
Under the Mobile Ecosystem business, in March 2025, Baidu App’s monthly active users reached 724 million, up 7% year over year.
BIDU’s Zacks Rank & Key Picks
Baidu currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
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