According to Fangzheng Securities, the recent fluctuations in Baidu's stock price due to the success of its fast runner technology are likely short-term. If Tesla's Robotaxi, a self-driving car rental service, is released in October 2023 and accelerates industrialization, there is a possibility that the value of Baidu's smart driving business may be reassessed. Currently, the operating costs of Robotaxi are higher than those of online car-hailing and taxi services, due to costs such as hardware, software, and safety personnel. However, according to Frost & Sullivan data, the operating cost of Robotaxi per kilometer will continue to steadily decline, reaching the same level as human-driven online car-hailing services by 2026, and then below the cost of human-driven online car-hailing services.
According to the bank, since its launch in March 2023, Baidu's Wenyin Yiyuan has become China's most advanced and widely used AI basic model. According to the April 2024 Create2024 Baidu AI developer conference, the number of Wenyin Yiyuan users has exceeded 200 million, the daily average API call volume has exceeded 200 million, the number of customers served is 0.085 million, and the number of AI native applications developed using the Qianfan platform exceeds 0.19 million. Compared with a year ago, Wenyin's large model algorithm training efficiency has increased by 5.1 times, with a weekly training efficiency of 98.8%, inference performance has improved by 105 times, and inference cost has decreased to 1% of the original. The bank believes that as large language model users and enterprise applications gradually land, Baidu's long-term investment in the AI field is expected to gradually show results.
According to the bank, Baidu has multiple business lines, including not only advertising services with relatively certain profit models, but also cloud computing, smart driving and other businesses that have not yet achieved profitability in the short term but have broad long-term prospects. Therefore, the bank uses the SOTP method to value the company. The SOTP calculation shows that the reasonable market value of Baidu in 2024 is about 347.7 billion yuan. The bank predicts that the company's non-GAAP net income attributable to its mother will grow by -3.7%, 6.8%, and 6.8% from 2024 to 2026, reaching 27.68 billion yuan, 295.6 billion yuan, and 315.6 billion yuan respectively. Corresponding to a 24-year non-GAAP net profit PE ratio of 13X. The bank gives it a "recommended" rating for the first time.