(Yicai Global) May 19 -- Baidu’s stock price surged after the leading Chinese internet search and artificial intelligence company reported better-than-expected revenue for the first quarter and gave a more robust forecast than expected for this quarter.

Baidu’s shares [NASDAQ:BIDU] gained more than 8 percent to touch USD116.48 in pre-market trading today. They closed 7.7 percent higher yesterday after the Beijing-based company released its earnings report.

Revenue fell 7 percent to CNY22.5 billion (USD3.2 billion) in the three months ended March from a year earlier, topping analysts’ estimates, while Baidu issued guidance on second-quarter revenue of between CNY15 billion and CNY27.3 billion, also above estimates. First-quarter non-GAAP net profit climbed more than three-fold to CNY3.1 billion.

The company said its innovative businesses and diversified revenue streams helped it to weather the coronavirus crisis. They included marketing services for a broad range of sectors, new AI businesses and video-streaming platform iQiyi.

“Despite shelter-in-place in the first quarter, Baidu's total revenues declined just 7 percent year-over-year,” Chairman and Chief Executive Robin Li said in a statement. "With the pandemic coming under control in China, offline activities are rebounding and Baidu stands to benefit from a restart of the Chinese economy.”

Baidu’s forecast for revenue in the current period represents an annual swing of between a 5 percent drop and a 4 percent gain. It is only preliminary, as the Covid-19 situation in China is still evolving and business visibility is very limited, the report said.

The company’s board has also approved a new share repurchase plan which will buy back up to USD1 billion worth of stock before July 1 next year, the report added. Buybacks are usually aimed at removing some of a firm’s publicly traded shares from the market, thereby buoying or raising the price of the stock.

GAAP net profit was CNY41 million (USD5.8 million) in the first quarter, a better performance than last year when Baidu reported its first quarterly loss since its Nasdaq listing in 2005 due to a huge outlay on marketing.

First-quarter online marketing revenues fell 19 percent at CNY14.2 billion, while other revenues jumped 28 percent to CNY8.3 billion, mainly driven by strong growth in iQiyi membership, cloud services and smart devices, the report said.

Baidu’s search engine app supplied on average over one billion people a day with epidemic-related information in the first quarter. This drove robust growth in both traffic numbers and session duration. The number of daily active users of the app grew 28 percent in March from the same period last year to 222 million. In-app search queries jumped 45 percent and users spent 51 percent longer browsing.

The firm's AI solutions and products also helped to power growth. In March, its Internet of Things Xiaodu smart devices had five times more voice commands than last year, reaching 3.3 billion. Its Apollo open-source autonomous driving platform won smart infrastructure project tenders in several cities, including Chongqing, Hefei and Yangquan.

Editor: Kim Taylor