Time to put Baidu on your watchlist

Barclays had initiated an "OVERWEIGHT"
On 3rd November 2021, Barclays had initiated an "OVERWEIGHT" rating on Baidu to 243.

What is $Baidu(BIDU.US)$ doing?
I guessed not everyone had heard of this counter called $Baidu(BIDU.US)$ / $BABA-SW(09988.HK)$ , but in fact they are the $Alphabet-C(GOOG.US)$ of China. As Google is banned in China, the natives mostly used Baidu search. They are a chinese internet related and artifical intelligence company based in Beijing.

Robotaxi Launch
$Baidu(BIDU.US)$ aims to launch its driverless taxi service in 100 cities by 2030. Users can hail an autonomous car via an app. Currently, Baidu operates its Apollo Go robotaxi service in five Chinese cities. Baidu looks to expand Apollo Go to 65 cities by 2025 and then 100 cities by 2030. The cost of a human driver accounts for about 60% of the user payment in ride-sharing, according to a Credit Suisse report. Baidu's strategy for building a robotaxi business is to reduce the cost of self-driving technology and target specific user scenarios.

Baidu Enters Into License Agreement With Sanofi to Enable Next-Generation mRNA Therapeutics and Vaccines
Baidu a leading AI company with strong Internet foundation, and Sanofi, a leading biopharmaceutical company focused on human health, have entered into an agreement to integrate Baidu's messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) design optimization platform, LinearDesign, into Sanofi's product design pipeline. Under the agreement, Sanofi will leverage the LinearDesign platform to contribute to the optimization of mRNA sequences for human therapeutic and preventive uses. This agreement marks a milestone for Baidu to use its strengths in computational biology to optimize mRNA vaccine and therapy designs in real-world pharmaceutical practice beyond Covid-19.

Baidu will receive milestone payments when any mRNA-based therapy or vaccine candidate discovered by Sanofi using its algorithm enters clinical trials, said Huang Liang, a Baidu scientist leading the project. "The fact that this agreement includes milestone payments shows that [Sanofi] has great confidence in bringing candidates developed with Baidu algorithm into clinical trials and to the market," Huang told Reuters. He declined to disclose the size of the deal. Baidu's algorithm is designed to deliver a larger number of optimised mRNA sequences and there are early signs that it could be more suitable than standard algorithms in vaccine and therapeutic drug development, Huang said.

Baidu Continue To Gain Cloud Market Share At The Cost Of Huawei, Tencent
Chinese tech majors Huawei Technologies Co and Tencent holdings have lost cloud services market share in the third quarter amid formidable competition from market leader Alibaba and Baidu. The cloud units of Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, and Baidu Inc (NASDAQ:BIDU) held a combined 80% of the China market in Q3. However, the second most significant player Huawei Cloud's market share, contracted 230 bps to 17% Q/Q. The third-largest player Tencent Cloud's market share declined to 220 bps to 16.6% Q/Q. Alibaba Cloud's market share expanded 450 bps to 38.3%. Baidu AI, Cloud's market share, expanded 40 bps to 8.2%. Baidu grew 64.7% in Q3, thanks to its more significant customer base across different sectors and industrial internet projects. Baidu grew 64.7% in Q3, thanks to its more significant customer base across different sectors and industrial internet projects.

Analysis of Baidu's financials

Price to Earning Ratios: BIDU is good value based on its PE Ratio (23.3x) compared to the US Interactive Media and Services industry average (27.1x).

Price to Book Ratio:BIDU is good value based on its PB Ratio (1.5x) compared to the US Interactive Media and Services industry average (3.2x).

Earnings as at 30 september = 11.2% profit margin

Earnings for Baidu

Debt is not a concern

Financial Position Analysis

Short Term Liabilities: BIDU's short term assets (CN¥215.4B) exceed its short term liabilities (CN¥73.9B).Long Term Liabilities: BIDU's short term assets (CN¥215.4B) exceed its long term liabilities (CN¥85.9B).