Baidu Inc BIDU shares came under pressure in early trading on Friday, despite the company's better-than-expected quarterly results.

The results came amid an exciting earnings season. Here are some key analyst takeaways.

Goldman Sachs On Baidu

Analyst Lincoln Kong maintained a Buy rating while cutting the price target from $161 to $153.

Baidu reported its first-quarter revenues in line with expectations but managed to deliver a beat on EBIT and net profit, Kong said in a note. Baidu Core has delivered more than 20% net profit growth on average over the past six quarters, "which was helped by OPEX efficiency execution and lower-than-expected LLM-related R&D and depreciation expense," he added.

The full-year guidance was mixed and reflected Baidu's "structural transition towards an increasing Gen-AI centric revenue mix," the analyst stated. Management expects to continue with the share repurchase authorization of $4 billion until December 2025, "with the target of containing/narrowing total share count," he further wrote.

Check out other analyst stock ratings.

Mizuho Securities On Baidu

Analyst James Lee reiterated a Buy rating and price target of $130.

Baidu Core generated revenue growth one point above consensus, with advertising revenues growing 3% year-on-year, "decelerating 8 points from 11% last quarter," Lee said. Baidu's mobile ecosystem continued to gain traction, with app monthly average users (MAUs) growing by 3% year-on-year, he added.

"Non-advertising revenues grew 6% YoY driven by the AI Cloud business but decelerating 3 points vs 9% last quarter," the analyst further wrote.

Benchmark On Baidu

Analyst Fawne Jiang reaffirmed a Buy rating and price target of $180.

Baidu's revenues came in line with lowered expectations and the company delivered a "solid beat on profitability," Jiang said. The company is likely to face a monetization setback as it incorporates incremental GenAI content in its search results, reducing its "ad inventory and ad load in attempt to boost user engagement and time spent," Jiang added.

The ongoing growth challenges due to macro and competition headwinds could further impact the company's core ad growth, the analyst said. "On the positive side, we anticipate that GenAI cloud adoption continues to drive acceleration in BIDU cloud growth and have raised our FY24 cloud estimates," Jiang further wrote.

BIDU Price Action: Shares of Baidu had declined by 1.63% to $110.76 at the time of publication on Friday.

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