Baidu’s (BIDU) CEO Robin Li on Q2 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Source: Seeking Alpha

 

Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU)

Q2 2014 Earnings Conference Call

July 24, 2014 8:00 p.m. ET

Executives

Sharon Ng – Senior Manager of IR

Robin Li – Chairman and CEO

Jennifer Li – CFO

Analysts

Eddie Leung – BofA Merrill Lynch

Dick Wei – Credit Suisse

Alan Hellawell – Deutsche Bank

Alicia Yap – Barclays

Thomas Chong – Citigroup

Ella Ji – Oppenheimer

Wendy Huang – Standard Chartered

Piyush Mubayi – Goldman Sachs

Jiong Shao – Macquarie

Ming Zhao – 86Research

Cynthia Meng – Jefferies

Philip Wan – Morgan Stanley

Chi Tsang – HSBC

Natalie Wu – CICC

John Choi – Daiwa

George Askew – Stifel Nicolaus

Tian Hou – T.H. Capital

Operator

Hello, and thank you for standing by for Baidu’s Second Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]. 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 your host for today’s conference, Ms. Sharon Ng, Baidu’s Senior Manager of Investor Relations.

Sharon Ng – Senior Manager of IR

Hello everyone, and welcome to Baidu’s second quarter earnings conference call. Baidu’s earnings release was distributed earlier today, and you can find a copy on our website 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 statement 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 website 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 website.

I will now turn the call over to Baidu’s CEO, Robin Li.

Robin Li – Chairman and CEO

Hello everyone. We had a great quarter and there are exciting things happening at Baidu, generating tremendous energy and having strong forward momentum.

In the mobile era, search can be even more powerful as it connects users not only to information but also to services. Search is one of the top two most used applications on mobile according to a CNIC [ph] report released this week.

This quarter, mobile monetization again progressed very well, with mobile revenue, which is largely comprised of mobile search revenue, accounting for 30% of our total revenue. The healthy mobile search monetization ramp is a testament to search as a proven business model with vast potential.

As a bit of a refresher, Baidu’s mission is to provide the best way and most equitable way for people to find what they’re looking for. Users come to Baidu to discover. In the mobile age, connecting people with what they’re looking for includes not only information, content and apps, but also services, a natural extension of our platform.

We hold leading positions in the key mobile entry points of search, maps and app distribution. We are making investments to facilitate the seamless connection of users to services in a closed loop, which allows us to have a better understanding of user behavior and conversion for merchants. Over the longer term these investments will increase the size of our addressable market.

In our core search business, we remain the clear, dominant, cross-channel search leader. Mobile search traffic, again, drove overall traffic growth. In the second quarter, for the first time in history, during some holidays and weekends, when people were out and about, mobile traffic exceeded the traffic of desktop search.