Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2023

May 16, 2023 8:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Hello and thank you for standing by for Baidu's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After managements prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's conference, Juan Lin, Baidu's Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Juan Lin - Director, IR

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Baidu's first quarter 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 newswire services. On the call today, we have Robin Li, our Co-founder and CEO; Rong Luo, our CFO; Dou Shen, our EVP in-charge of Baidu AI Cloud Group, ACG; and Zhenyu Li, our SVP in-charge of Baidu Intelligent Driving.

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 provisions 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 materially from our current expectations.

For detailed discussions of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our latest annual report and other documents filed with our 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 include discussions of certain unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Our press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures and is available on our IR website at ir.baidu.com. As a reminder, this conference [is being recorded] [ph]. 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 - Co-Founder and CEO

Hello, everyone. 2023 is off to a good start with our business performing well across the board and driving strong growth. In Q1, Baidu Core's revenue growth reaccelerated year-on-year and supported an improvement in our operating margin. Our online marketing business has seen a positive impact from China's overall economic improvement. After the Chinese New Year, there was a quick recovery, which was especially beneficial for many of our advertisers in offline sectors such as travel, healthcare, bin services, and local services.