On Tuesday, Chinese internet technology company Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) is expected to deliver its fourth-quarter earnings report after the market closes. Shares of the company have skyrocketed over the past year after its business successfully grew and continued to show a positive outlook despite the growing competition in the market.
Strong Revenue Outlook
During the first three quarters of 2017, Baidu’s revenue has delivered a solid 17% growth to as much as 61.3 billion Chinese yuan or $9.3 billion. Earnings of the company before taxes has also risen by 38% to 16.5 billion Yuan with most analysts expecting its previous growth to continue in their fourth-quarter earnings.
Baidu has been able to focus on growing its artificial intelligence technologies over the past year as well as improving its mobile search engine as it continues to strive for higher growth enabling their users to have an improved experience though artificial intelligence innovation.
The company’s adoption of new technology during the past year have helped enhanced overall user experience which allowed them an easier navigation as well as a faster loading in terms of the mobile application’s performance.
The efforts of the company in improving its customer experience has led to a growth on its total daily active users of the Mobile Baidu to rise above 100 million during the first two quarters of 2017 from having around 80 million from the previous year.
Baidu has also added new features including voice recognition searches that allowed first-time users to navigate easier. The iQiyi also performed positively during the year with their mobile app daily active users hitting 160 million by the end of the third quarter from their daily active user count of 125 million during the same period last year.
Aside from these new application feature improvements, the company’s food delivery business last year has also risen with its net income and diluted earnings per share rising 100% year over year to 17 billion yuan or $2.6 billion and 49 yuan or $7.25 per share.
Baidu has also reached an agreement with American streaming company Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) which would allow them to stream a number of Netflix produced programs on iQiyi which is subject to regulatory approval. Due to Netflix’s international popularity along with iQiyi’s massive user base of almost 400 million users, analysts have forecasted that this might push the growth of Baidu’s revenue further in terms of their online video business.