Stabilize the basic market, Baidu heavy warehouse new growth curve

Produced ｜ Pai Finance

Text ｜ Editor Wang Feiyi ｜ Edit Son

BAT veteran Baidu accidentally handed over a tough two -quarter report.

Baidu gave many surprises this time. The financial report shows that in the second quarter, Baidu achieved revenue of 29.647 billion yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 5%; net profit attributable to Baidu (non -American general accounting standards) reached 5.541 billion yuan, an increase of 3%year -on -year, exceeding the market expectations.

However, the problem still exists. Under the influence of the epidemic and the economic environment, the online marketing business of Baidu's revenue is a lot of pressure. The financial report shows that its core advertising revenue fell by 10%year -on -year and did not run the industry; Although the new businesses such as the second and third growth curves, although new businesses such as autonomous driving have begun to start volume, bringing some imagination to the outside world, but from the revenue, there is no signs to see the loss from loss to profit. Essence

At the financial report in the first quarter of last year, Li Yanhong once set the goal of "Baidu's non -advertising revenue will exceed advertising revenue in the next three years." One year later, Baidu's advertising revenue was still in the core position, accounting for 58%of the revenue ratio in the second quarter, lower than 60%of the same period last year; non -advertising revenue accounted for nearly 21%, an increase of 5%year -on -year.

At present, it is still difficult to achieve its goal, and Baidu still needs to continue to accumulate in the trough.

01. Basic disk stabilizes

In the first half of 2022, in the first half of 2022, Baidu also started cost reduction and efficiency.

According to the financial report, in the second quarter, Baidu's sales and management costs were 4.8 billion yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 16%, mainly due to the decrease in channel expenditure and marketing. Compared with the first quarter, Baidu further reduced the scale of expenditure. In the first quarter, Baidu's sales and management costs were 4.7 billion yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 11%.

It can be seen that in the second quarter alone, Baidu saved more than 1 billion yuan due to the reduction of costs, directly helping Baidu to turn losses in the quarter to achieve a profit of 3.6 billion yuan (loss of 583 million yuan in the same period last year).

However, the side effects are also quite obvious. Without sufficient marketing cost support, Baidu search for basic disk traffic has touched the ceiling. According to the financial report, the number of monthly active users of Baidu APP in June reached 628 million, which was basically the same as the previous quarter. In the previous quarter, this number was 632 million.

With the sharp decrease in marketing costs and stagnation of user scale, the main business performance is better than expected, highlighting the toughness of Baidu.

Earlier, the head investment bank expected Baidu's advertising business to decline by 10%-15%, while Li Yanhong said that due to the repeated affected by the epidemic, the advertising business in the fields of retail, medical health, and local services in April to May will be hit. Business decline expanded from 4%in the first quarter to 10%in the second quarter.

Although the decline has expanded, this achievement is not bad compared to peers. Quest Mobile's data shows that in the first half of 2022, the size of the Internet advertising market in China was 290.36 billion yuan, a decrease of 2.3%year -on -year. Baidu was significantly lower than the industry level, but compared with itself, Baidu's advertising business increased by 9 in the second quarter of the first quarter. %; Compared with the decline of 20%and 30%of mature platforms such as Tencent and Ali in the industry, Baidu's performance is also eye -catching.

It should be pointed out that although the economic situation is not optimistic, as a new pillar of the growth of Baidu advertising in recent years, Baidu's hosting page advertising in the second quarter will still increase by 10%year -on -year. However, the growth rate of up to double digits also indicates that its pillar effect is still obvious.

Another good phenomenon is that 84%of the Baidu APP DAU in June was mentioned in the second quarter report of Baidu. At the same time, the mobile ecological interaction volume has also been further increased. In the second quarter, Baidu APP searched for query query times and information flow content to achieve double -digit growth year -on -year. Such user data performance also guarantees the income of Baidu's advertising business to a certain extent.

However, if the timeline is stretched, from 2021, Baidu's online marketing business performance is not optimistic, showing a continuous decline. From the first quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022, the year-on-year growth rate of Baidu's advertising business was 27%, 18%, 6%, 1%, -4%, and -10%, respectively. The bottom is unknown.

After lengthening the timeline to the year, it can be more obvious that the trend of Baidu's advertising business can be more obvious. Baidu's advertising revenue began to decline since 2019, fell 4%year -on -year in 2019, fell 5%year -on -year in 2020, and increased by 12%year -on -year in 2021. After a brief recovery in 2021, it returned to the decline channel. In the first half of 2022, this growth rate became 7%.

Under the impact of short videos to become the mainstream, peer Douyin, fast -handed, video number and other short video platforms, good -looking videos did not realize the high hopes of Baidu in the field of short video. At present, Baidu's advertising business can be said Measured space. This can be clearly seen in Kuaishou's financial report. In the second quarter, the revenue growth rate of Kuaishou's advertising business was 10.5%. Compared with the year -on -year decrease of Baidu's dual -digit, the contrast was quite strong.

In the second quarter financial report, when asked about Baidu's advertising business trend, Li Yanhong said, "Compared with the first quarter, these factors may improve in the second quarter, but now there are still many uncertainty." It is no wonder that as early as May of this year, Baidu transferred Shen Yan away from the mobile ecological business group (MEG), and the outside world agreed that this was the protection of the recognized successor. 02. Smart clouds continue to grow

In addition to the advertising business, the most hoped to assume the heavy responsibility of Baidu's second growth curve is the smart cloud business.

Baidu Smart Cloud is the core of Baidu's non -advertising business. The financial report shows that in the second quarter, Baidu Smart Cloud's business achieved revenue of 4.2 billion yuan, an increase of 31%year -on -year, and a month -on -month increase of 10%. However, the growth rate has continued to slow down. In the first quarter of this year, the intelligent cloud business increased by 43%year -on -year, and the year -on -year growth rate of Q4 in 2021 was 60%.

However, with the decline in other manufacturers' growth rates, Baidu Smart Cloud can still maintain a growth rate of more than 30%, which is rare. In contrast, the growth rates of Alibaba Cloud's Q1 and Q2 in 2022 were 12%and 10%, respectively, and the growth rate of corporate services including Huawei Cloud in the first half of 2022 was 27.5%.

In the field of AI public clouds, Baidu Smart Cloud performance is remarkable. On June 22, the "2021H2 China AI Cloud Service Market Research Report" released by IDC showed that in 2021H2 (2021 in the second half of 2021), Baidu Smart Cloud ranked first in the overall AI software and application market as a Chinese AI cloud service manufacturer.

And if you carefully analyze this achievement, the business strategy of Baidu Smart Cloud in the past two years is quite effective.

Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng proposed and optimized Baidu Smart Cloud's strategic play in 2020, summarizing it as "Yunzhi One", that is, "Yun+AI" healthy growth strategy. Based on this strategy, Baidu Smart Cloud has changed in two levels. One is to pursue high -quality scale growth, and the other is to find differentiation with other opponents. Scenes.

From a separate point of view, Baidu Smart Cloud denied the "regardless of cost, pursuit of scale" in the field of cloud business two years ago, and focused on focusing on technical product drivers to make it technically energetic. In the past ten years, Baidu has established the entire AI service center of Baidu's brain through its continued investment in the AI ​​field, and relying on this center and flying paddle platform to fully release the ability of AI technology to serve in manufacturing enterprises. This strategic change has achieved results. It is understood that in the past two years, Baidu Cloud has more than 400,000 cases of application of manufacturing enterprises.

Nowadays, cloud service manufacturers, which once advocated losses, have begun to pursue efficiency, emphasizing that self -developed products are prioritized, not sacrificing profits in scale, and profit -oriented. From this point of view, Baidu has gained the first advantage.

The second point is that the focus of the business area allows Baidu Smart Cloud to gain certainty in the economic environment full of variables. Alibaba Cloud is more important to e -commerce customers, and Tencent Cloud is more entertainment customers. The two are more oriented to the Internet industry as a whole, but the advantage of Baidu is that many customers are from traditional industries.

For example, Baidu Intelligent Cloud released the opening of the 2.0 Industrial Internet Platform on the industrial track, accumulated more than 200 industrial solutions, and precipitated 38,000 industrial models. The platform has been launched in Chongqing and Guangzhou within one month; In the automotive manufacturing industry, Baidu Smart Cloud has established cooperation with head car companies such as Geely and SAIC, as well as new forces such as Weilai and ideal. Calculation of RMB orders, Baidu ACE intelligent traffic solutions have been adopted by 51 cities, an increase of more than 150%year -on -year.

The natural demand attributes of the above -mentioned customer structure allowed Baidu Smart Cloud to avoid the fluctuations caused by the economic environment and regulatory factors of the e -commerce and entertainment industry in the first half of 2022, helping it to achieve a high growth rate of the entire industry. Promote the health and sustainability it has always advocated.

Therefore, in the case of shrinking the entire cloud service market, Baidu Smart Cloud showed stronger toughness. But even so, Baidu Smart Cloud still has a certain gap from Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud. According to the China Cloud Computing Market Report released by Canalys, in Q1 in 2022, Baidu Smart Cloud's market share was 8.4%, which was the smallest among the "four clouds in China" composed of Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, and Tencent Cloud. In terms of revenue, in 2021, Baidu's smart cloud revenue was 15.1 billion yuan, about 1/5 of Alibaba Cloud and 1/2 of Tencent Cloud.

In the fierce competition of the cloud service market giants, Baidu Cloud needs to work harder. Otherwise, it is easy to be overtaken by Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, and Tencent Cloud in the front row. In fact, these three clouds have strode towards Baidu's intelligent cloud.

In 2021, Alibaba Cloud's business accounted for 53%from non -Internet companies, an increase of 5%year -on -year, including China Unicom, Sinopec and other companies, all of which have established cooperative relationships with Alibaba Cloud. In 2021, Tencent cooperated with the two traditional service industry giants of Deloitte and IBM. With the help of traditional boss's foreign power, it quickly cut into traditional industries and quickly obtained a large number of traditional industry customers in a short time.

In summary, although Baidu Smart Cloud has the first -mover advantage of paddle cultivation on the client, the chasing troops also have their own exceptions. However, one thing can be determined that the technology and service capabilities of the product are the core competitiveness of the cloud service manufacturers. To promote the competitiveness, it is necessary to invest a large amount of real gold and silver investment. In this regard, Baidu and Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud Compared with Huawei Cloud, it is not preferred. Baidu Chief Financial Officer Luo Rong said that smart transportation is expected to achieve a profit and loss balance in other vertical fields in the next few quarters. It can be seen that Baidu Smart Cloud currently has the potential of Baidu's second growth curve, but it has to wait for the beams.

03. Difficulty to drive autonomous driving?

In addition to smart clouds, Baidu's biggest growth potential comes from automotive business, but this part of business also brings a heavy burden on Baidu. "They all underestimate the R & D investment of autonomous driving. Baidu only last year (2021) for one year. Investing 20 billion, this may take 10 or even 20 years of long -term investment. "Li Yanhong once said.

In the second quarter of this year, Baidu continued to maintain high -intensity investment in R & D, with cost expenses up to 6.3 billion yuan, which was still the same as last year on the basis of revenue decline. Even the corporate strategy based on Baidu embracing artificial intelligence has increased the intensity of R & D in recent years, and the center of R & D cost rate has also risen upward, with more than 20%in seven consecutive quarters.

At present, Baidu's intelligent driving business has been at the forefront of the world at the level of technology, products and operations. It has become one of the four major autonomous driving leaders in the world. It is also the only Chinese company on the list. patent.

Relying on these autonomous driving technology, Baidu has set up three automotive business models for themselves: integrated car construction, Apollo's autonomous driving taxi to output intelligent driving capabilities for the OEM.

Let's look at the self -driving taxi first. This is the most advantageous field of Baidu in the above three models, and has a broad market space. According to CITIC Securities, the potential market space of autonomous driving is over trillion yuan. Among them, Robotaxi’s from Robotaxi The potential market space is the largest, about 3.2 trillion yuan (calculated based on 2040 long -term space).

At present, Baidu's autonomous driving has also reached the forefront of the industry. The financial report shows that in the second quarter, Baidu's autonomous driving service platform radish fast running to the public with 287,000 ride services, an increase of nearly 500%year -on -year. As of July 20, 2022, the cumulative order volume of radish running reached 1 million orders.

At the Baidu World Conference not long ago, Baidu released the sixth -generation without steering wheel unmanned vehicle Apollo RT6, with a target mass production cost of only 250,000 yuan, which enabled the cost of the drone to enter the mass market for the first time in China. It is expected to be put into operation at a certain scale in 2024.

However, there are still many variables in this point. Even if Baidu has explored in the field of autonomous driving for 10 years, there are still some extremely long -tail scenes that are difficult to solve in technology, just like Xiaopeng Automobile is responsible for autonomous driving deputy deputy deputy driving deputy to the deputy of autonomous driving. President Wu Xinzhou said: "I thought it had solved the problem of 90%, and when I looked back, I found that there were still 90%of the problem."

This also brings a more difficult problem -no one can guarantee that autonomous driving is absolutely safe. Li Yizhong, the Minister of Industry and Information Technology, once said that intelligent connected cars must be on the road, and they must prevent personal accidents. , Must be eliminated. In general, Baidu's autonomous driving is not afraid of 10,000, but in case.

However, the policy is gradually liberalizing. In early August, Baidu opened unmanned commercial operations in Chongqing and Wuhan. Baidu became the first company in China to provide the public with unmanned driving travel services on the open road. But there is a long distance from the full commercialization of driverless driving.

At the government level, the government has always been cautious, and explorers such as Baidu can only move forward. Wei Dong, vice president of Baidu Smart Driving Business Group and Chief Security Camp Officer, said that the difficulty of commercialization of autonomous driving is that the technology itself is still the technology itself still In continuous iteration, the scope of covering and service is still limited. Even optimism is expected that he believes that it can only usher in the unmanned commercialization climax from 2028 to 2030.

Looking at the high hopes of Baidu's high hopes, after a while of intensive rush, two months ago, the first product launched the first product-the car robot concept car Robo-01. However, once it was launched, its B -pillar design, lifting lidar radar could not regulate the collision of pedestrians, and the design of the design was strong. In this regard, the financial and economic policies in China have continued to land in the "domestic unmanned commercialization policy, Baidu Is there an hope for car building? "Detailed interpretation in one article.

Moreover, as far as the entire intelligent automobile industry is concerned, except for Tesla's profitability, the remaining players are currently in a loss state. Even the ideal of good students who were closest to profitability and known for their stubborn door also surrendered in the second quarter. Losses expanded by 172.2%year -on -year transcripts, and Xiaopeng sold a loss of 70,000. Under such circumstances, it is not realistic to bring considerable income and profits to Baidu in the short term.

Then there is output intelligent driving capabilities. At present, in addition to a few models such as Weimar adopted this solution, only BYD and other parts have adopted Baidu's technical solution. Autonomous driving can never be commercialized on a large scale. One of the main reasons for making a car in person.

Therefore, comprehensive, the entire car business is still in a state of continuous burning money, and as the business continues to deepen, especially the implementation of autonomous driving technology, the scope of burning money is likely to continue to expand, and when will the collective cars profitable when it is profitable?It is even difficult to foresee.In addition, the smart cloud business is also moving forward. Baidu's current revenue can only rely on basic advertising business support, but under the impact of short videos, this business has long been unable to stabilize as rock.

It can be said that a crack has appeared between Baidu's new and old business, creating a new growth curve is becoming its most important task.

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