Value Investment - BIDU - Improved Profitability After The VirusAll comments and likes are very appreciated.
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Fair Value and Profit Drivers |
Our fair value estimate is $190 per share, with a 2020 P/E of 31 times and 2021 P/E of 25 times.
We expect a 5% CAGR in online marketing revenue in the next five years, driven by recovery in the longer term. This is because weak macroeconomics (resulting in weaker demand and pricing for ads), substantial increase in ad inventory by Bytedance and Tencent, and moving customers’ landing pages to Baidu’s platform play an important role in the current weakness. We do not expect these headwinds to persist in the longer term, except Baidu’s competitor still have room to increase ad load. As the moving of landing pages is completed, the economy recovers, iQiyi’s in-feed revenue improves after cleaning up unhealthy ads, and video content can be approved more quickly after the 70th national day on Oct. 1, 2019, we expect Baidu and iQiyi’s advertising revenue to recover from a low base.
We expect other revenue to grow at a 17% CAGR in the next five years, driven by strong growth at iQiyi. 49% of the others revenue was iQiyi’s membership revenue in 2019, which will see growth from increasing subscriber number and high-quality original and licensed content at iQiyi. Baidu will spend more marketing dollars up front for app installation and cultivating app usage, but revenue generated from the users will occur during the lifetime of the users. Hence, we expect to see revenue grow faster after initial investments. Should the return on investment be poor, Baidu will have no choice but to cut back on sales and marketing expenses, which will boost margin. DuerOS and cloud are also other areas of investments.
We assume operating margin will rise back to 20.2% in 2024, compared with 5.9% in 2019. Excluding iQiyi, Baidu’s core operating margin is assumed to rise to 20.2% in 2024 from 19.1% in 2019. We think our assumptions of only a small-margin recovery for Baidu’s core operation have sufficiently incorporated the ever-increasing competitive environment in the Internet sector. This is particularly true in searching for general information, because it is still a necessity, and wide-moat Baidu has a dominant market share of over 70% in search. We are confident that Baidu resume growth for search. Our five-year net revenue and operating profit growth are 9% and 40% respectively.
Wide-moat Baidu’s fourth-quarter 2019 results were largely within our expectations, and after fine-tuning our model, we are cutting our fair value estimate to $190 from $199. However, we think the shares are undervalued, as Baidu is on track for improved profitability after the coronavirus outbreak. Fourth-quarter 2019 year-over-year revenue growth was 6%, at the high end of the latest guidance range of 4% to 6% and its previous guidance of negative 1% to 6%. Meanwhile, Baidu core revenue in the quarter grew 6% year over year, excluding spin-offs, at the high end of the latest guidance of between 4% and 6% and the previous guidance of between 0% and 6%. Baidu’s net income was CNY 6.3 billion in the quarter compared with guidance of CNY 6.2 billion to CNY 6.7 billion. Net income of Baidu core rose 84% year over year, at the low end of the guidance of 83% to 90%. Management said it expects 2020 first-quarter revenue to decrease 5% to 13% year over year for Baidu and to drop 10% to 18% for Baidu core compared with advertising peer Weibo’s 15% to 20% drop. We assume an 18% year-over-year decline in the first quarter; a 3% decline in the second quarter; followed by a 9% increase in the second half of 2020; and no growth in the full year of 2020 for Baidu core revenue. Our non-GAAP operating expense plus cost of revenue for 2020 is 7% higher than the annualized level that is based on the more rational level in the fourth quarter of 2019. Our five-year revenue and operating profit CAGR are 9% and 40% (low base in 2019 due to record low margin of 6%), respectively, versus 9% and 11% previously.
Risk and Uncertainty |
We think Baidu faces high levels of risk, given intense competition along with questions as to whether its AI-related investment will generate satisfactory returns.
Though Baidu is the largest search engine in China, it is competing with the other two Internet giants, Tencent and Alibaba, and Google’s potential return to Chinese search market is also a threat. Regarding the search engine business, Tencent invested in Sogou, and Alibaba acquired UC Web, which owns a mobile search engine, Shenma. Competition has extended to each key area of mobile Internet usage, such as navigation, O2O services, online video services and so on. Baidu’s margins have been significantly dragged down by aggressive spending in video content and O2O marketing but recovered to 18.5% in 2017 from 14.2% in 2016 as Baidu divested margin-dilutive businesses.
The major Internet companies in China have been investing in AI-related business, such as cloud computing, voice and image recognition, and autonomously driven cars. At the current stage, it is difficult to predict whether Baidu will be the final winner in AI and whether the returns will reward its investment.
In addition, regulatory risk is a concern. Following the Wei Zexi incident in early 2016, Chinese authorities launched new regulations for online search and advertising, which clearly defined paid search results as advertising. These regulations took effect Sept. 1, 2016. Given stricter standards for online advertisers, Baidu’s online marketing services revenue growth declined to 1% in 2016. If the local authorities release more policies regarding Internet business, such as online advertising and online finance, Baidu’s revenue could be negatively affected.
Since 2017, Baidu has discontinued the disclosure of MAUs for its mobile search and mobile maps, which is possibly due to weaker numbers.
I and/or others I advise hold a material investment in the issuer's securities.
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All comments and likes are very appreciated.
Best Regards,
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