On the evening of November 21st, Baidu (09888. HK; BIDU. O) released its financial report for the third quarter of 2024. According to the financial report, Baidu's total revenue for the third quarter was 33.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3%; Baidu's core revenue was 26.5 billion yuan, basically unchanged year-on-year.
Among them, online marketing revenue was 18.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 4%. However, driven by its intelligent cloud business, Baidu's non online marketing revenue in the third quarter was 7.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12%.
From the perspective of profit performance, Baidu's operating profit for this quarter was 5.9 billion yuan, with a non GAAP operating profit of 7 billion yuan. In terms of core aspects, Baidu's operating profit for this quarter was 5.7 billion yuan, with an operating profit margin of 21%; Under non GAAP accounting standards, the operating profit was 6.7 billion yuan, with an operating profit margin of 25%.
In terms of net profit, the net profit attributable to Baidu in the third quarter was 7.6 billion yuan, of which the net profit attributable to Baidu's core was 7.54 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17%, exceeding market expectations, with a net profit margin of 28%. The net profit attributable to Baidu under non GAAP is 5.9 billion yuan, and the net profit attributable to Baidu's core is 5.7 billion yuan, with a net profit margin of 21%.
Overall, this financial report reveals that Baidu is in a "transition period" of accelerating the landing of artificial intelligence.
From the perspective of artificial intelligence related businesses, Baidu has many data highlights. According to the financial report, Baidu's Wenxin big model had an average daily call volume of 1.5 billion times in November, a 30 fold increase from the 50 million times disclosed in Q4 last year.
In terms of developer ecosystem, within the third quarter, Baidu launched two enhanced lightweight models, ERNIE Speed Pro and ERNIE Lite Pro, further expanding the richness of the Wenxin series models. As of November, the number of PaddlePaddle Wenxin ecological developers has reached 18.08 million.
Baidu has also explored the reshaping of search through large-scale models. In September, the monthly active users of Baidu App reached 704 million, a year-on-year increase of 6%. Public data shows that there are 150000 enterprises and 800000 developers on the Baidu Wenxin intelligent agent platform.
In terms of intelligent cloud business, according to the report of China AI Public Cloud Service Market Share, 2023 released by IDC in August, Baidu AI Cloud ranked first for five consecutive years. Public data shows that the Baidu AI Cloud Qianfan model platform has helped customers fine tune 33000 models and develop 770000 enterprise applications.
In the field of autonomous driving, as of October 28th, Baidu's autonomous driving travel service has provided over 8 million rides nationwide; The number of ride hailing services provided in the third quarter reached 988000, a year-on-year increase of 20%.
However, the capital market still needs time to digest Baidu's achievements in the landing of artificial intelligence. As of press time, Baidu's US stock market was trading at $82.98, a decrease of 4%.