Why Baidu Stock Wilted on Wednesday

Key Points

• The Chinese tech industry giant reported its second-quarter results that morning.

• It posted declines in both revenue and adjusted profitability.

• 10 stocks we like better than Baidu ›

Veteran Chinese tech giant Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) looked rather tired to equity investors on Wednesday. They didn't seem wowed by the company's latest earnings release and expressed this by collectively trading their American depositary shares (ADS) down by almost 3%. This was a steeper fall than the 0.2% endured by the bellwether S&P 500 index.

Top- and bottom-line slides

Baidu's second-quarter results, published well before market open that day, revealed that the company's revenue slumped by 4% year over year to 32.7 billion yuan ($4.55 billion). That was slightly below the consensus analyst estimate of 32.9 billion yuan ($4.58 billion).

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The decline and miss might have been more pronounced had it not been for the company's artificial intelligence (AI)-boosted offerings. Baidu quoted CEO Robin Li as saying that its AI Cloud business "continued to deliver robust and healthy revenue growth, supported by our strengthening full-stack AI capabilities and comprehensive end-to-end AI products and solutions."

It didn't help push the bottom line higher, however, as non-GAAP (adjusted) net income fell by 35% to just under 4.8 billion yuan ($668 million). On a per-ADS basis, the company's profitability was 13.58 yuan ($1.89). On the bright side, this was a bit higher than the average analyst estimate of 13.33 yuan ($1.86) per ADS.

Motoring into a better future?

In its earnings release, Baidu pointed to AI as a potential engine of growth. On the subject of engines, it also clearly has high hopes for the robotaxis coming from its mobility unit, Apollo Go. It said that it is a leading company in robotaxi markets with both left- and right-hand drive regimes.

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Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Baidu. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.