Shares of Baidu, the Chinese internet company that specializes in artificial-intelligence services, were falling early Wednesday after reporting disappointing results.
Revenue for the fourth quarter was 34.95 billion yuan ($4.9 billion), a 6% increase from a year earlier. For 2023, revenue rose 9% to about $19 billion. Earnings per share grew 50% to 95 cents in the last three months of the year.
Traders were expecting bigger gains. Still best known for providing the dominant search engine in China, the company has been left out of the boom in AI stocks over the past few months. The stock also has been dogged by reports that the company’s chatbots have been tested by scientists associated with the Chinese military.The U.S. ban on exporting the most advanced semiconductors to the world’s second-biggest economy doesn’t help, either.
Baidu’s American depositary receipts fell 2.1% in premarket trading. Coming into the session, they had fallen 5.7% so far this year and have declined 22% over the past 12 months.
Shares of Google-parent Alphabet were down 0.6% in the premarket. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba was off 2.7%. Microsoft, the maker of a rival chatbot, was down 0.5%.
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