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Baidu (BIDU) Appoints Dr. Qi Lu as Group President & COO

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Baidu, Inc. (BIDU - Free Report) recently appointed Dr. Qi Lu to the position of its Group President and Chief Operating Officer.

In his illustrious career, Dr. Lu has served many industries, including technology-driven, digitally focused organizations. Most recently, he worked with Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) as a Global Executive Vice President and was also in charge of its Office business. Prior to Microsoft, he worked with Yahoo! and also became its Executive Vice President in 2007.

Dr. Lu boasts bachelor and master degrees in computer science from Fudan University in Shanghai and is a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. Also, he holds over 40 U.S. patents and has authored many papers in his field.

Management believes that Dr. Lu’s considerable experience and business proficiency will be instrumental in helping the company achieve its long-term goals.

Robin Li, Baidu's Chairman and Group CEO said, "Dr. Lu possesses a wealth of leadership and management experience, and is a leading authority in the area of artificial intelligence. I am confident that Dr. Lu will make major contributions to the overall strength of our management and technology.”

Coming to the price performance, over the last one year, shares of Baidu have underperformed the Zacks characterized Internet Services industry. The stock registered a gain of only 7.66% against the industry’s gain of 16.36%.

To Conclude

Baidu provides Internet search services in China. It also offers a Chinese language search platform for businesses to reach their customers.

Baidu’s increasing presence in the online video market will improve its competitive position. Some of the current buoyancy surrounding the shares is related to the company’s strong dominance in the mobile search market and its consistent product development efforts. Moreover, Baidu continues to gain market share. We believe that the company has significant growth potential in the mobile market over the long term.

However, higher promotional expenses, heavy spending on video and O2O, and increasing competition on its own search platform from the likes of Qihoo 360 Technology and Sohu’s Sogou search engine remain as concerns.

The company is expected to report fourth-quarter results on Feb 23.

Baidu, Inc. Price and Consensus

 

Baidu, Inc. Price and Consensus | Baidu, Inc. Quote

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

Currently, Baidu has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). A better-ranked stock in the industry is Mercadolibre, Inc. (MELI - Free Report) sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Mercadolibre delivered a positive earnings surprise of 23.58% on average in the past four quarters.

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