Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2023

February 28, 2024 7:30 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Hello and thank you for standing by, for Baidu’s Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only-mode. After management's prepared remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's conference, Juan Lin, Baidu’s Director of Investor Relations.

Juan Lin

Hello everyone and welcome to Baidu’s fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 earnings conference call. Baidu’s earnings release was distributed earlier today and you can find a copy on our website as well as on our newswire services.

On the call today, we have Robin Li, our Co-Founder and our CEO; Rong Luo our CFO, and Dou Shen our EVP in charge of Baidu AI Cloud Group ACG. After our prepared remarks, we will hold a Q&A session.

Please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor Provision of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ maturity from our current expectations. For detailed discussions of these risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our latest annual report and other documents filed with the SEC and Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Baidu does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law.

Our earnings press release and this call includes discussion of certain unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Our press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most comparable with GAAP measures and it's available on our IR website at ir.baidu.com.

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast of this conference call will be available on Baidu’s IR website.

I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Robin.

Robin Li

Hi. And when we concluded 2023 with the solid note. Baidu’s total revenue for the fiscal year increased about 8% year-over-year, and the non-GAAP operating margin expanded from 22% to 24%. This improvement highlighted the resilience of our core business, which serve as a strong foundation for our ventures in ERNIE and ERNIE Bot.

2023 marked a year of Gen AI and foundation models. A massive technology shifts that will re-engineer this process and bring about a real renaissance in every sector of the economy. Baidu is well prepared to benefit greatly from this groundbreaking economic revolution. We progressed from talking about the opportunities of Gen AI and foundation models to activity of high ERNIE and ERNIE Bot at scale.