Baidu Stock Jumps Even as Earnings Miss Estimates. There Are Big Things to Like.

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A growing cloud computing and artificial intelligence business at

Baidu

helped the Chinese tech giant weather a sales slowdown in its core business in the last quarter.

It’s boosting the stock too. Shares in Baidu (ticker: BIDU) surged 3.6% in premarket trading Tuesday, outpacing a 0.8% fall in futures tracking the technology-heavy

Nasdaq.

Often hailed as China’s answer to Google, Baidu’s bread and butter is the online search advertising business, which has faced tough macroeconomic headwinds in recent months similar to those faced by e-commerce peer

Alibaba

(BABA).

Fourth-quarter earnings released Tuesday show that Baidu’s efforts to push into high-growth areas including self-driving cars helped to offset a marked slowdown in the core business.

Baidu reported net income of $269 million for the final three months of last year on sales of $5.2 billion. Profit fell slightly short of the $279 million expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet, but revenue beat estimates of $5.1 billion.

“Baidu concluded a solid 2021, evidenced by a strong growth in our non-advertising business, particularly the acceleration of Baidu AI Cloud,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Robin Li in a statement.

Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]