Baidu.com, Inc. (ADR)(NASDAQ:BIDU) Looks Promising In the Coming Quarters

 Food for thought over the weekend. Baidu.com, Inc. (ADR)(NASDAQ:BIDU) shares have been showing consistent up move since the beginning of this year on positive news inflows. The stock has witnessed a rally of over 25% year to date and made a seven month high of $154.15 earlier in the week.

The recent rally was driven on reports that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) intends to include Baidu as a search option for Chinese subscribers in a pending iOS update, though as per reports from Next Web, Google (GOOG) will remain the default choice. The move will surely provide solid benefit to the company as it already have over 80% market share in the Chinese search engine market and there is a strong expectation that most users will make the switch, thus cutting out Google.

In February, the company had posted stronger than expended fourth quarter earnings. The company’s net income came at 93 cents a share on revenue of $710.1 million, ahead of analysts’ projections of 90 cents a share on revenue of $706.6 million. For the quarter, gross margin stood at 79.6%, 120 basis points worse than the prior-year quarter. Operating margin was 51.3%, 70 basis points worse than the prior-year quarter.

Fundamentally, the company has an impressive track record with solid growth, Gross margin (80.2%), operating margin (52.2%), and net margin is (45.8%).

Analysts are still bullish on the stock with a mean price target of $189.12 from 23 different brokerage firms. Out of 29 brokerage firms, 23 firms have strong buy or buy rating on the stock with the remaining 6 have hold rating.

For the quarter ended March, analysts are estimating the company is expected to earn 84 cents a share, up from a year ago profit of 47 cents a share. Revenue is estimated to grow by 82.105 to $677.27 million, from $372 million a year ago.

In the china search engine market, the company’s competitor includes SINA Corporation (USA)(NASDAQ:SINA), Sohu.com Inc.(NASDAQ:SOHU) and Renren Inc(NYSE:RENN).