Earnings Labs

Baidu, Inc. (BIDU)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 29, 2015

$125.84

-1.70%

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Same-Day

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1 Week

-13.22%

1 Month

-7.96%

vs S&P

-8.44%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello and thank you for standing by for Baidu's First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remark there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to you host for today's conference, Sharon Ng, Baidu's Director of Investor Relations.

Sharon Ng

Management

Hello, everyone and welcome to Baidu's first quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Baidu's earnings release was distributed earlier today, and you can find a copy on our Web site, as well as on newswire services. Today you will hear from Robin Li, Baidu's Chief Executive Officer; and Jennifer Li, Baidu's Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks, Robin and Jennifer will answer your questions. Before we continue, please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to those outlined in our public filings with the SEC including our annual report on Form 20-F. Baidu does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law. Our earnings press release and this call include discussions of certain unaudited, non-GAAP financial measures. Our press release contains a reconciliation of unaudited non-GAAP measures, to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures and is available on our IR Web site, at ir.baidu.com. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast of this conference call will also be available on Baidu's IR Web site. I will now turn the call over to Baidu's CEO, Robin Li.

Robin Li

Management

Hello everyone, and thanks for joining today's call. This quarter we continued to drive mobile [indiscernible] to new heights as we build out our mobile eco system more fully. For the first time mobile represented half of Baidu's total revenues further reinforcing Baidu's industry leadership in mobile. We were able to reach this important watershed by innovating and doing things differently. Our track record proves that we showed the right strategy and tactics and that we executed [deeply] and decisively as we navigated the mobile shift in our home market. Search is still about direct immediate expression of our user intent. We successfully leverage this and the open nature of our platform as far as our extensive underground sales force to achieve this dramatic growth in mobile. And there is much more to come. As many user still just turning to recent to the power of smartphone and how it empowers them as consumers, see opportunities that mobile opens up are limitless. We see huge potential ahead for mobile marketing, online to offline and key life verticals such as healthcare, education and financial services. By leveraging our solid mobile foundation, exceptional technology advantage and proven operational experience. We are redefining the third spot by going beyond returning information like Web sites, addresses and phone numbers to our users. We are now connecting users with services and enabling close look transactions. We are pioneering a different approach to the basic inner way creating more naturalistic intuitive and convenient wave for people to perform search and delivering results than our more intelligently predictive and better matched to the need of time and place. To fulfill our ambition we are building our eco-system by investing heavily in R&D operating our own Baidu offering like Nuomi group buying, Baidu take out foot delivery and…

Jennifer Li

Management

Thank you, Robin. Hello everyone. In Q1, we again saw dramatic growth from mobile and continued to see tremendous opportunities on the horizon. We’re executing our investment plans and closely tracking and monitor trajectory, scale and conversion metrics to measure returns. While investments in some of the newer products such as Nuomi, take-out food delivery, Wallet and Baidu Connect are still at a early stage, we’re pleased with the progress that we have made thus far and we’ll continue working hard to ramp up these services in the coming quarters. In Q2, we’ll continue our marketing and promotional spend to take advantage of spring time travel and various consumer oriented shopping days. As we said before, sales and marketing will be an area of particular focus, we’ll be optimistic and spend will vary from quarter-to-quarter. ITE continues to be a highly strategic asset with attractive long-term growth prospect. We’ll continue to invest in content and spend where needed to procure high quality license to content and develop self produced content to support ITEs growth. Content cost will vary quarter-on-quarter. The fundamentals of our business are very strong and the growth opportunities ahead for Baidu are vast, but also very much within reach, we’re working hard and moving quickly to execute on our plan. In addition to leveraging our existing platform, we’ll continue to deploy the necessary resources to further build out our ecosystem and create long-term shareholder value. Now moving to the financials, all mandatory amounts are RMB, unless stated otherwise. For the first quarter total revenue were 12.7 billion, representing a 34% increase year-on-year. Over the first quarter Baidu had approximately 524,000 active online marketing customers, a 17% increase from the corresponding period in 2014 and flat from the previous quarter. Revenue per online marketing customer for the first…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Eddie Leung from Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question.

Eddie Leung

Analyst

Robin Li

Management

Jennifer Li

Management

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Alan Hellawell from Deutsche Bank. Please ask your question.

Alan Hellawell

Analyst

Jennifer Li

Management

Robin Li

Management

Operator

Operator

The next question is coming from the line of Dick Wei from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question.

Dick Wei

Analyst

Robin Li

Management

Dick Wei

Analyst

Robin Li

Management

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Your next question comes from the line of Alicia Yap from Barclays. Please ask your question.

Alicia Yap

Analyst

Jennifer Li

Management

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Yao from JP Morgan. Please ask your question.

Alex Yao

Analyst

Robin Li

Management

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Piyush Mubayi from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.

Piyush Mubayi

Analyst

Robin Li

Management

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ming Zhao from 86Research. Please ask your question.

Ming Zhao

Analyst

Jennifer Li

Management

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Chao Wang from Nomura. Please ask your question.

Chao Wang

Analyst

Robin Li

Management

Jennifer Li

Management

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Citigroup. Please ask your question.

Thomas Chong

Analyst

Robin Li

Management

Jennifer Li

Management

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Chi Tsang from HSBC. Please ask your question.

Chi Tsang

Analyst

Jennifer Li

Management

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Cynthia Meng from Jefferies. Please ask your question.

Cynthia Meng

Analyst

Robin Li

Management

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Natalie Wu from CICC. Please ask your question.

Natalie Wu

Analyst

Jennifer Li

Management

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Eric Wayne from Blue Lotus. Please ask your question. Mr. Eric Wayne, your line is open please ask your question.

Eric Wayne

Analyst

Jennifer Li

Management

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ella Ji from Oppenheimer. Please ask your question.

Ella Ji

Analyst

Jennifer Li

Management

Ella Ji

Analyst

Jennifer Li

Management

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Wendy Huang from Macquarie. Please ask your question.

Wendy Huang

Analyst

Jennifer Li

Management