Baidu earned 837.4 million yuan ($123.5 million), or 2.40 yuan (35 cents) per share, up from 383.3 million yuan, or 1.10 yuan per share, a year earlier. Excluding stock options expenses, Baidu earned 36 cents per share.

Revenue rose 74 percent to 1.91 billion yuan ($282.3 million), the Beijing-based company said.

The company had about 254,000 active online marketing customers during the quarter, up 25 percent from a year earlier.

Baidu had about 64 percent of China’s search market in the first quarter of this year, up from 58.4 percent the previous quarter, according to research Analysys International.

Industry analysts expect Baidu to benefit from Google Inc.’s decision to close its China search engine in a dispute over Beijing’s Internet censorship, requiring users to go to its Hong Kong site. Analysys said Google’s share of advertising slid from 35.6 percent to 31 percent in the first quarter but it said there was no significant decline in search traffic and revenue appeared stable.

For the current quarter, Baidu forecast revenue in the range of 2.2 billion yuan ($324.4 million) to 2.26 billion yuan ($333.3 million), an increase of 72 percent to 77 percent from a year earlier.

Source : Konaxis