Baidu operating profits up 47% pushed by mobile revenue

Baidu delivered some rare (and unaudited) good news yesterday—profits leaped 47% in the second quarter of 2017 with mobile revenue surging to 72% of total revenues. Shares rose 7.2% on the news, which came the same day as fellow Chinese majors Alibaba and JD broke market cap records.

The search giant’s operating profit rose 47% to RMB 4.21 billion ($621 million) compared to Q2 2016, on a net income increase of 83% to RMB 4.415 billion ($651 million). Total revenues in the second quarter of 2017 were RMB 20.874 billion ($3.08 billion), a 14.3% increase from the corresponding period in 2016.

Mobile revenue represented 72% of total revenues for the second quarter of 2017, compared to 62% for the corresponding period in 2016. iQiyi was picked out in the report as having improved its margins, despite Baidu’s content costs as a component of cost of revenues increasing from 9.3% of total revenues in 2016 to 14.9% this year (RMB 3.112 billion). This year-on-year increase was mainly due to iQiyi’s increased content costs, according to the report.

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