Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) Stock Analysis
Baidu, Inc.
▾ What's in the 55/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). It excludes the Altman Z score, whose retained-earnings input this filer does not report separately. See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
How to read BIDU
We are not publishing an intrinsic value for this one — the section below says exactly why. Everything on this page that comes straight from the filings and the tape is still here; treat the missing valuation as a known gap, not as a verdict on the business.
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Reported earnings & margins ↓
What the company actually reported — unaffected by the valuation being held.
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Balance sheet & book value ↓
Assets, liabilities and equity as filed.
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Who's selling & betting against it ↓
Insider and short-interest behaviour needs no valuation model.
The share count we read for BIDU looks wrong — common for multi-class / founder-controlled filers that report shares per share-class. That makes per-share figures (including intrinsic value) misleading, so we suppressed them. The company's total financials below are sound.
What to use instead: Lean on the totals — revenue, net income, cash flow — and the balance sheet. Multi-class share counts are being corrected; once fixed, the per-share valuation returns automatically.
This note is only about the single DCF fair-value number — BIDU's full financial statements, health scores, and written analysis are all below.
Quality & solvency checks
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
The Z-score needs working capital, retained earnings, EBIT, sales and total assets from the latest balance sheet, and at least one of those isn't reported in machine-readable form here — common for foreign private issuers. We leave it blank rather than compute a distress verdict from an estimated input. It doesn't affect the reported figures in the financial tables below.
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
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✓ Positive net incomeNet income $799.0M in FY2025.
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✗ Positive operating cash flowOperating cash flow -$431.0M (was $2,909.0M the prior year).Why this matters: Profit can be an accounting figure; cash from running the business is harder to fake. Negative operating cash flow means the core business consumes cash and must be funded externally.
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✗ Cash flow backs up reported profitOperating cash flow -$431.0M vs net income $799.0M.Why this matters: When cash generated exceeds reported earnings, profits are high-quality (not propped up by accruals or one-time items).
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✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets 1.2% vs 5.6% a year ago.Why this matters: Is the company squeezing more profit out of each dollar of assets than last year? Rising = getting more efficient; falling = the opposite.
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✗ Debt load (vs assets)Long-term debt is 9.2% of assets vs 8.4% a year ago ($5,907.0M of $64,229.0M assets).Why this matters: Rising debt relative to assets means more risk and more cash going to interest instead of shareholders. Falling debt is a sign of strengthening.
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✗ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 1.76x vs 2.09x a year ago.Why this matters: The current ratio compares assets it can turn to cash within a year against bills due within a year. Below 1.0 means it may struggle to cover near-term obligations.
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· Share count (dilution) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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· Pricing power (gross margin) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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✗ Sales per asset (asset turnover)Asset turnover 0.29x vs 0.31x a year ago.Why this matters: Asset turnover measures how much revenue each dollar of assets generates. Rising = more productive use of the asset base.
Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.
A standard discounted cash flowDCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
Full explanation → valuation is not meaningful for Baidu due to its declining revenue over the past four years, making future cash flow projections highly uncertain. Investors are likely focused on the company's ability to re-accelerate revenue growth and maintain its profitability, despite recent negative operating cash flow. The primary quantifiable risk is the continued revenue decline of -1.4% per year.
As of 3 months ago
Anatomy of a share
What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.
What you actually need to decide
Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.
- Quarterly revenue growth rate acceleration
- Operating cash flow turning consistently positive
- Progress in autonomous driving commercialization
The trend, in plain numbers (FY2024 → FY2025, latest reported)
Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.
- Revenue grew +1% to $18.46B.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$2.67B — the cash burn widened vs last year.
- Net income fell -75% to $799.0M.
Management & Leadership
Robin Li is the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Baidu, having led the company since its inception. He is a prominent figure in China's technology sector, guiding Baidu's strategic direction in AI and internet services.
What They Make
Baidu is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in internet-related services and products, artificial intelligence, and autonomous driving. Its primary customers are businesses seeking online advertising and consumers using its search engine and AI-powered applications.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.
The market is likely pricing Baidu based on its potential to reverse the current revenue decline and capitalize on its AI and autonomous driving investments. Despite recent negative operating cash flow, the company has been profitable for five consecutive years, suggesting underlying business strength that investors are betting on for future growth.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
Baidu funds itself through its operations and has been reducing its long-term debt, which has fallen from $8414M to $5907M.
Normalized FCF
Mature company (rev $18.5B) with negative current FCF but positive OCF in 4/5 years: using normalized cash flow (median OCF minus maintenance capex).
Show advanced inputs
| Revenue Growth | -1.4% |
| Historical Fcf Growth | 49.5% |
| Sector Default | 12.0% |
| Best Estimate | 3.0% |
| Method | blend(70% revenue_cagr, 30% sector) |
| Growth Basis | total |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project product, services and recurring/cloud lines independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.
Maturity & Competitive Position
Moat Signals
Revenue has been declining at -1.4% per year over the last four years, from $19536M to $18458M.
Geography & Markets
Baidu is headquartered in China and primarily operates within the Chinese market, serving its vast internet user base. Specific geographic revenue mix is not available in current filings.
Geographic Risks
Market Signals
These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.
Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
Full explanation → (14)54.0NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
Full explanation →BearishLine below signalThe fast trend is below the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently downward.
Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (8 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (7)
- Median OCF: $3.16B, est. maintenance capex: $1.58B, normalized FCF: $1.58B.
- Terminal growth (2.5%) capped to 2.4% (80% of near-term growth 3%).
- Shares from unknown — per-share values may be less accurate.
- Illiquidity discount 25% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
- Shares/market cap missing or defaulted; per-share valuation unreliable.
- Shares defaulted to 1; IV is NOT meaningful — treat as data-unavailable.
- DATA UNAVAILABLE: per-share values suppressed due to missing/unreliable shares data.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From Baidu, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 18.5B | 799.0M | — |
| 2024 | 18.2B | 3.3B | — |
| 2023 | 19.0B | 2.9B | — |
| 2022 | 17.9B | 1.1B | — |
| 2021 | 19.5B | 1.6B | — |
Cash Flow (5yr)
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | -431.0M | 1.7B | 517.0M | -2.7B |
| 2024 | 2.9B | 1.1B | 655.0M | 1.1B |
| 2023 | 5.2B | 1.6B | 894.0M | 2.7B |
| 2022 | 3.8B | 1.2B | 984.0M | 1.6B |
| 2021 | 3.2B | 1.7B | 1.1B | 341.0M |
How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: -431.0M − 1.7B − 517.0M (SBC & adj.) = -2.7B. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a mid-cycle estimate (median operating cash flow less estimated maintenance capex and stock compensation — by design NOT the table's FCF, which deducts every year's full capex), not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 64.2B |
| Total Liabilities | 22.8B |
| Equity | 38.1B |
| Total Debt | 5.9B |
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