Baidu reports Q1 revenue jump

BEIJING - Chinese Internet giant Baidu reported a 31.2-percent year-on-year increase in revenue in the first quarter (Q1) thanks to increased sales from search-engine-based new businesses.

Baidu raked in 15.821 billion yuan ($2.45 billion) in the first three months of 2016, with online marketing revenue rising 19.3 percent to 14.931 billion yuan, according to a financial statement released on Friday.

Its mobile business accounted for about two-thirds of the total revenue as the company has been investing heavily to diversify away from search advertising to adapt to growing Internet access from smartphones instead of personal computers.

Baidu reported having 663 million monthly active users in March, up 9 percent year on year while its users of online payment and financial services reached 65 million by the end of March, rising 152 percent compared with the same period last year.

Baidu's shares rose by over 4 percent in after-market trades on the Nasdaq exchange following release of the impressive earnings figures.

The company accelerated its integration of search engine, group buying and mapping services to push location-based e-commerce, in which gross merchandise volume reached 16 billion yuan, up 268 percent year on year.

"We got off to a good start this year and have made remarkable strides in our vision to connect people with information and services to provide an integrated solution to customers," said Robin Li, Baidu board chairman and CEO.

"We look forward to more business opportunities offered by our core search engine business via the integrated online marketing and transaction services platform," he added.

The country's largest search engine has been making forays into new markets such as online-to-offline businesses, video production and R&D on driverless car and other artificial intelligence technology to tap the market potential unleashed by China's economic shift.

Baidu expects its Q2 revenue to be around 20.11 billion yuan to 20.58 billion yuan, which would be a year-on-year increase of over 28 percent.