(Reuters) -Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc beat quarterly revenue estimates on Tuesday, powered by growth in its cloud business and artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives.
Total revenue grew to 33.09 billion yuan ($5.24 billion) for the fourth quarter to Dec. 31, beating the 32.22 billion forecast by analysts, IBES data from Refinitiv showed.
Revenue from Baidu’s core businesses, which include search engine and AI cloud services, rose 12% to 25.98 billion yuan.
Advertising revenue grew 1% to 19.1 billion yuan, while non-advertising revenue, mainly driven by its cloud business, jumped 63% to 6.9 billion yuan.
Baidu has also been doubling down on self-driving technologies, which it has heavily invested into over the past five years.
Baidu started to charge fees for its robotaxi service Apollo Go on open roads in November, when it won approval for commercial operations of its autonomous cars in Beijing. Apollo Go in total operated around 213,000 rides in the quarter.
Baidu also monetizes its autonomous driving technologies by supplying its Apollo system to automakers, including Geely-owned Volvo and Ford.
The company will offer BYD , one of the biggest Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers, its Apollo Navigation Pilot services, Baidu chief executive Robin Li said in a conference call.
Net income attributable to Baidu fell to 1.72 billion yuan, or 4.51 yuan per American Depository Share (ADS) in the quarter, from 5.17 billion yuan, or 15.05 yuan per ADS, a year earlier.
The company said it incurred a 27% increase in selling, general and administrative expenses due to higher spending, promotional marketing and personnel costs.
Baidu’s New-York-listed shares rose 3% in premarket trading.
($1 = 6.3121 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru and Yingzhi Yang in Beijing; editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri, Jason Neely and Tomasz Janowski)
