China’s Baidu sees shares jump by over six per cent as company reveals growth in mobile business
Chinese search engine Baidu saw shares shoot up by over six per cent in after hours trading, after the company said its solid third quarter performance had given it confidence to keep investing
The figures
The company reported earnings per share of 7.92 renminbi (£0.81) for the three months to 30 September, surpassing analysts' expectations of 7.17 renminbi. Revenues climbed to 18.4bn renminbi, a 31.7 per cent hike compared with the same period of last year.
Meanwhile, the number of mobile search monthly active users rose by 26 per cent year-on-year to 643m in September.
Why it's interesting
The company has made a big play for more of the mobile market. The group's mobile payments service, Baidu Wallet, saw users increase by 520 per cent to 45m, having launched in April last year. Baidu Wallet competes with Alibaba and Tencent for a share of the Chinese mobile wallet market.
The company is also getting involved with other apps – in September, Uber boss Travis Kalanick confirmed UberChina had bagged at least $1.2bn (£783m) in its latest round of funding, with the investment led by Baidu.
What Baidu said
"With mobile accounting for nearly two-thirds of search traffic and China squarely in a mobile age, is pioneering and redefining the mobile experience for users in. We further extended the reach of our platform by deeply integrating and connecting search and maps with transaction services," said Robin Li, Baidu's chairman and chief executive.
Finance chief Jennifer Li added: "We delivered another solid quarter, with mobile growing its contribution. The momentum in transaction services gives us the confidence to continue investing. We will invest in ways that leverage and buttress our competitive advantage.”
In short
Jumping into China's growing mobile market has paid off for the country's answer to Google.