Chinese technology giant Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) reported quarterly revenue that handily beat Wall Street estimates as the company beefed up its cloud and artificial intelligence services.
Referred to as "China's Google," Baidu has diversified its revenue sources by expanding its cloud-computing, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving technology as competition for its search engine intensifies against rivals Alibaba and ByteDance.
The Beijing-based company said its revenue rose 25% to 28.13 billion yuan ($4.38 billion U.S.) in this year’s first quarter, boosted by non-advertising revenue growth of 70%. Analysts had expected revenue of 27.25 billion yuan, according to Refinitiv Data.
Baidu also benefited from its streaming affiliate, iQIYI, which posted a 25% increase in advertising revenue during the quarter ended March 31. Similar to Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), iQIYI's streaming subscribers grew by 3.6 million in the quarter to reach a total of 105.3 million.
Baidu's results follow the company’s completion of its secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in late March. U.S.-listed shares of Baidu rose 3.5% in pre-market trading on the earnings results.
