Chinese search giant Baidu posted second-quarter profits up 95% on a year ago at $253m, following rapid growth in advertising revenues.
The firm generated of $528m in the same period, up 78% on last year.
Customers bought more advertising on Baidu’s website as the Beijing-based company added users and extended its lead over Google Inc. (GOOG) in China’s search-engine market.
Chief Executive Officer Robin Li, ranked the nation’s richest man by Forbes magazine, is stepping up acquisitions to offer new services to meet rising competition from Internet rivals including Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700) and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Li said: “We benefited from strong traffic growth and improved monetisation. We were especially encouraged with the strong spending from large clients.”
Baidu’s shares increased as much as 8.9 percent to $170.51 in extended trading, after closing at $156.54 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
The stock had gained 62 percent this year, after more than doubling in 2010. That compares with the 21 percent gain in the Hong Kong-traded shares of Tencent, China’s biggest online-games company, and the 22 percent decline in Alibaba.com Ltd. (1688), the business-to-business unit of Alibaba Group, the country’s biggest e-commerce company.
Revenue is expected to be between $611.1m and $626.6m in the third- quarter, Baidu said.
Baidu accounted for 75.9 percent of China’s search-engine market by revenue in the second-quarter, rising from 75.8 percent in the previous three months, according to research company Analysys International.
Google’s share dropped to 18.9 percent from 19.2 percent, the researcher said.
Google has been losing ground in China’s search-engine market since January 2010, when the Mountain View, California- based company said it was no longer willing to comply with Chinese regulation to self-censor Web content.
Two months later, the U.S. company shut its Google.cn service and redirected Chinese users to its site in Hong Kong.