Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Baidu second quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Juan Lin, Head of Investor Relations for Baidu. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Baidu's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Baidu's earnings release was distributed earlier today, and you can find a copy on our website as well as on newswire services. On the call today we have Robin Li, our Co-founder and CEO, Rong Luo, our CFO, Dou Shen, our EVP in charge of Baidu AI Cloud Group, and Zhenyu Li, our SVP in charge of Baidu Intelligent Driving. After our prepared remarks, we will hold a Q&A session. Please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations.
For detailed discussions of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our latest annual report and other documents filed through the SEC and Hong Kong Exchange. Baidu does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Our earnings press release and this call includes discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Our press release includes a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and is available on our IR website at ir.baidu.com. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast of this conference call will be available on Baidu's IR website. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Robin Li.
Hello, everyone. Baidu Core earned CNY 23.2 billion in revenues and 5.1 billion in non-GAAP operating profit in the second quarter. The resurgence of COVID-19 led to an unfavorable macro environment in the quarter. However, Baidu AI Cloud and intelligent driving business maintained their rapid growth momentum as they aligned well with the government's repeated calls for technology innovation. Especially Q2 revenues from Baidu AI Cloud increased by 31% year-over-year, outgrowing many of our peers, contributing 18% of Baidu Core's revenues in the quarter. That's up from 14% in the same period last year. Further, the operating margin for Baidu AI Cloud improved on both a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis. Apollo Go completed 287,000 rides in Q2, increasing by almost 500% year-over-year.
On July twentieth, Apollo Go's accumulated rides reached 1 million. In July, we unveiled Apollo RT6, the sixth generation Apollo robotaxi vehicle, bringing the cost of robotaxi to the price range of mass-market electric vehicles for the first time in China and globally. We aim to put a sizable amount of RT6 vehicles into operation in 2024. While Baidu Core ad revenues decreased by 10% year-over-year in second quarter due to a challenging macro environment, our mobile ecosystem continued to generate strong cash flow as we focus on operational excellence and efficiency. Since early June, we have seen signs of recovery as the control measures were gradually lifted. For example, the year-over-year decline of our ad revenues narrowed in June and July. In particular, ad revenues from retail customers resumed year-over-year growth during the 618 shopping festival.
Project implementation for Baidu AI Cloud has also been improving, thanks to the gradual removal of some major travel restrictions. While the recovery is likely to be at a gradual pace and there could still be some uncertainties about the development of COVID-19, our long-term goals, strategies, and capabilities for shareholder value creation remain intact. At Baidu, we have built a discipline of long-term thinking, which we believe is a strong asset in this fast-evolving, innovative, and highly competitive business environment. Cost optimization and operational efficiency are always top of mind for us. Our mobile ecosystem business should continue to generate strong cash flow to fuel and fund our investments in Baidu AI Cloud and intelligent driving over the long term. Now, let's give you the second quarter operational highlights.
Revenues from Baidu AI Cloud grew by 31% year-over-year in the quarter, once again, outstripping our peers despite the macro challenges brought by COVID-19 resurgence. Our growth was driven by the strong performance in cloud business facing enterprises and the public sector. Notably, we managed to improve our operating margin both on a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis in Q2 as we focused on healthier and more sustainable cloud revenue growth. We aim to achieve profitability as we scale up further. Baidu AI Cloud continues to benefit from the growth opportunity in China's digital and intelligent transformation. We believe this transformation is still at the early stage, and organizations are eager to leverage technologies to improve efficiency and productivity.
Over the past years, we have made tremendous advances in AI technologies, made our AI capabilities widely available to enterprises and developers through our open platform, gained valuable industry expertise, saw significant improvements in productivity in areas like manufacturing, transportation, energy and utilities, and the public sector. Baidu AI Cloud differentiating strengths are our AI capabilities and deep understanding of industry-specific pain points to help our customers to accelerate their transformation. In short, our competitiveness enables us to take full advantage of the tailwind offered by this new secular trend. Revenues from ACE Smart Transportation increased by about 40% in Q2. During the second quarter, we won several new projects for highways and in urban roads, both from our new and existing customers.
By the end of second quarter, Baidu ACE Smart Transportation has been adopted by 51 cities, up from 20 cities a year ago and 41 cities a quarter ago, based on the contract amount over CNY 20 million. Going forward, we will continue to focus on key industries and enable cross-industry replication for similar use cases by utilizing AI innovation. By doing so, we believe we will be able to reduce the operating losses and achieve profitability over time. In the meanwhile, we will continue to focus on quality and sustainable revenue growth and aim to continue outgrowing our peers. Moving to intelligent driving. Apollo Go continues to take big steps towards scaling up operations, strengthening its lead position as the world's largest autonomous ride-hailing service provider.
In Q2, Apollo Go provided 287,000 rides to the public, up almost 500% year-over-year and 50% quarter-over-quarter. On July 20, 2022, Apollo Go's accumulated rides reached 1 million. In the Yizhuang region of Beijing, according to our estimates, Apollo Go has obtained a 10% market share for ride-hailing services with pickup and drop-off both in Yizhuang. Apollo Go already becomes an important supplement for daily commuting after we launched the services less than two years ago. Now, more than 100 Apollo Go vehicles are serving the Yizhuang residents on a daily basis, and each vehicle on average completes more than 20 rides per day. In July, Apollo Go branched out to Hefei and Chengdu and is now operating in more than 10 cities, charging fees in 7 cities across China.
We believe large-scale operation allows us to improve our level four autonomous driving technology further. With data generated from everyday operation, we can identify problems that are not visible during the testing phase. The number of corner cases incurred during operation has far exceeded the ones found by vehicles in testing. In addition, Apollo Go has made some exciting progress since our last earnings call, marked by receiving the green light to provide fully driverless ride-hailing services and launching of the sixth generation robotaxi vehicle, RT6. Earlier this month, we obtained the regulatory permits in Chongqing and Wuhan to provide fully driverless ride-hailing services on open roads. We were also authorized to collect fees of those services. We are proud to be the first and only company in China now to offer fully driverless ride-hailing services to the public on open roads entirely without human drivers in the car.
Such achievements validate our superior level four autonomous driving technology and endorse our strategy of utilizing large-scale operations to boost further technological advancement. On July twenty-first at Baidu World, we unveiled Apollo RT6, the sixth generation Apollo robotaxi vehicle, with a targeted mass production cost of CNY 250,000. This is significantly lower than the mass production cost of the fifth generation vehicle and is in the price range of mass-market electric vehicles. RT6 is designed to offer large scale, fully driverless ride-hailing services and launched at a time that both our technological and operational capabilities are ready. We believe that China's smart EV value chain has already been well established. Some of the auto parts and components for level four autonomous driving solutions are already being produced in China at a much lower price than a few years ago.
Moreover, RT6 is a passenger-centric vehicle, so we have removed some components specially designed for drivers. For example, RT6 has a detachable steering wheel, which could unlock space for extra seats, luggage, desks, and even some entertainment equipment, enriching the in-car experience for the passengers. Such achievements have set a strong foundation for Apollo Go to significantly reduce the two largest cost items for its operation, labor cost and the robotaxi vehicle cost. This is a critical step for Apollo Go to build a revolutionary business model and accelerate expansion. Over the long term, we aim to make Apollo Go an alternative mobility option for millions of people, creating tremendous economic and social values. Baidu Apollo's auto solutions, including ASD and DuerOS for Apollo, continue to gain popularity among automakers.
As an increasing number of auto OEMs have publicly committed their brand to autonomous and connected vehicles, we're pleased to see that many have chosen to form alliances with Baidu to expedite their timelines and plans. Recently, the total projected cumulative sales of our auto solutions have grown to CNY 10.3 billion per our internal estimates. Moving to the mobile ecosystem. The user base of our mobile ecosystem continued to grow steadily. We once again delivered strong margins in the second quarter despite the negative impact on our ad spend caused by macro weakness. On the user side, Baidu App MAU increased by 8% year-over-year to 628 million in June. Daily search queries and content distributed through Baidu App grew double digits year-over-year in Q2.
Our innovations and efforts in delivering a closed loop experience have made Baidu App increasingly valuable to users. In addition to searching for information and knowledge, people come to Baidu App to look for ways to fulfill their needs. We have enabled them to order services, purchase products, and interact with industry experts and others without leaving Baidu App. Here are some metrics to share. 84% of our DAU in June were logged-in users. That's up from 76% a year ago. People have discovered that their user experience within Baidu App continues to improve once they are logged in. Quarterly GMV facilitated by Baidu search, not too small, grew by about 127% year-over-year. In particular, during the 618 shopping festival, GMV increased by about 260% year-over-year.
In June, about 130,000 industry experts actively signed up for our Instant Replies feature, up from about 100,000 in March. Total daily Instant Replies increased by about 190% year-over-year, up about 30% from March. Another highlight is our progress in short videos. Currently, about 85% of the content distributed within Baidu App feed are short videos. During the quarter, we expanded the fully immersive video experience in the search result page to all the users. This feature is now available on both search and feed, helping drive short video consumption on Baidu App. In Q2, short videos distributed through search and feed increased by double digits year-over-year. In addition, we are also using AI to expand our content portfolio.
We give content creators AI tools which they can use to produce video content more efficiently. AI-generated content works particularly well for long-form content and breaking news. While using our closed loop experience, more and more users are leaving their footprints within our mobile ecosystem, increasing our capability to understand user needs and enabling strong conversion optimization at each step of their journey. Together with our continuous effort to optimize the advertising technologies, this has helped us to significantly improve the ad conversion rate for our customers. Looking ahead, here are some key takeaways I'd like to give you. First, operationally, we have built strong new growth engines for Baidu Core, which we believe will boost Baidu Core's revenue growth in the coming years. Baidu AI Cloud with its uniqueness in AI capabilities continues to outgrow most of our peers.
Apollo continues to solidify its position as the largest autonomous ride-hailing service provider in the world. Apollo has entered a new chapter with fully family ride-hailing on open roads. While the launch of our purpose-built RT6 robotaxi vehicles for ride-hailing at really low cost, Apollo is set to accelerate its operation, further differentiating from our peers in both technology and operation. Second, the second takeaway financially is the mobile ecosystem will continue to generate strong cash flow to fund our investments in cloud and intelligent driving. On a separate note, we are also excited about iQIYI's continuous effort in improving operational efficiency. iQIYI once again generated operating profit in Q2, the second consecutive quarter to report positive operating profit on both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Furthermore, iQIYI generated positive net operating cash flow in the quarter for the first time.
Before I turn the call to Rong, I'd like to highlight that we will be added to the Hang Seng Index from September fifth. We believe with the inclusion of Hang Seng Index, one of the best-known indices in Asia, the Hong Kong shares of Baidu will receive more fund flow. Overall, I'm very proud of the team's strong execution in the quarter and remain excited about our future. With that, let me turn the call over to Rong to go through our financial highlights.
Thank you, Robin. Now let me walk you through the details of our second quarter financial results. Total revenue was CNY 29.6 billion, decreasing 5% year-over-year. Revenue from Baidu Core was CNY 23.2 billion, decreasing 4% year-over-year. Baidu Core online marketing revenue was CNY 17.1 billion, decreasing 10% year-over-year. Baidu Core non-online marketing revenue was CNY 6.1 billion, up 22% year-over-year, driven by cloud and other AI power businesses. In Q2, Baidu AI Cloud increased by 31% year-over-year to CNY 4.3 billion. Revenue for iQIYI was CNY 6.7 billion, decreasing 13% year-over-year.
Cost of revenues was CNY 15.2 billion, decreasing 5% year-over-year, primarily due to the decrease in content costs, partially offset by the increase in personnel related expenses and other costs related to new AI businesses. Operating expenses were CNY 11.1 billion, decreasing 8% year-over-year, primarily due to an increase in channel spending and promotional marketing expenses. Operating income was CNY 3.4 billion. Baidu Core operating income was CNY 3.2 billion, and Baidu Core operating margin was 14%. non-GAAP operating income was CNY 5.5 billion. non-GAAP Baidu Core operating income was CNY 5.1 billion, and non-GAAP Baidu Core operating margin was 22%.
Total other income net was CNY 151 million, compared to a total other loss of CNY 2.4 billion last year, which included a fair value loss of CNY 3.1 billion from long-term investments. In the second quarter of 2022, we recognized a fair value gain of CNY 536 million, a significant portion of long-term investments, including but not limited to investments in equity securities of public and private companies, private equity funds and digital assets. As such two quarterly fair value adjustments, which may contribute to a net income volatility in future periods.
Income tax expenses was CNY 25 million, decreasing 99% year-over-year, primarily due to the reversal of certain tax expenses accrued for 2021 based on the 2021 tax return filed in the second quarter of 2022 and an increase in deduction on certain expenses that were considered not deductible in the second quarter of 2021. Net income attributable to Baidu was CNY 3.6 billion, and diluted earnings per ADS was CNY 9.97. Net income attributable to Baidu Core was CNY 3.7 billion. Non-GAAP net income attributable to Baidu was CNY 5.5 billion. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per ADS were CNY 15.79. Non-GAAP net income attributable to Baidu Core was CNY 5.4 billion, and non-GAAP net margin for Baidu Core was 24%.
Adjusted EBITDA was CNY 7.1 billion, and Adjusted EBITDA margin was 24%. Adjusted EBITDA for Baidu Core was CNY 6.6 billion, and Adjusted EBITDA margin for Baidu Core was 28%. As of June 13, 2022, cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments were CNY 189.4 billion. Cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments excluding iQIYI were CNY 184.5 billion.
Free cash flow was CNY 5.5 billion, and free cash flow excluding IT was CNY 5.5 billion. Baidu Core had approximately 36,000 employees as of June 13, 2022. With that update, let's now open the call for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question will come from Alex Yao of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, management. Good evening. Thank you for taking the question. I know that you guys mentioned that you are seeing a sign of recovery in the advertising businesses since June. Could management just share more color on the recovery in terms of advertising categories? Looking into the second half of 2022, how do you expect the advertising to develop? In the medium to longer term, if I look beyond the near-term impact of COVID, how do you foresee the advertising business to develop in the medium to longer term? Thank you.
Hi, Alex, this is Robin. As you know, Baidu Core ad revenues decreased about 10% year-over-year last quarter, because of the challenging macro environment. In April and May, our ad revenues experienced a significant year-over-year decrease because COVID-19 impacted some of China's major cities, especially Shanghai and, to a lesser extent, Beijing. In June, our ad revenue started to recover when the situation gradually improved, and July was better than June. In terms of ad verticals, some of the ad verticals got hit really hard in April and May. That include the retail sector, travel, local services, and healthcare. Ad spending from these verticals has been picking up quickly since June. Looking into the second half of the year, we're still facing macro uncertainties.
It is hard for us to predict the development of COVID at this stage. For example, the resurgence in some of the hot travel destinations like Sanya caused by the early ending of the summer travel peak season. Our search ad is highly correlated with China's GDP growth and the performance of China's SMEs. We believe our ad revenue should recover when macro improves. We have also seen some opportunities for our mobile ecosystem around e-commerce and short videos. For example, integrating e-commerce and short videos with our search and feed. In fact, more and more short videos are available in our search results, which should help us to improve the user experience.
I think in the mid to long term, our enriched content in key verticals and our capabilities in facilitating transactions within Baidu apps, as well as our closed loop experience for users, will help us to create more user insights for our customers. These insights will help us drive ad conversion and generate advertiser value, supporting the long-term growth of our online advertising business.
Operator, next question, please. The next question comes from Kenneth Fong of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. Congratulations on another quarter with a strong cloud revenue growth. Can you help us understand the underlying drivers that help Baidu AI Cloud to outperform your peers? What's your outlook for the cloud business for the second half of the year? I'm wondering if you can also help us understand your strategy as well as timeline for the cloud business to reach breakeven. Thank you.
Thank you, Kenneth, for your question. This is Dou. I will address the revenue part and leave the second part to Long. As Robin just mentioned, right, Baidu AI Cloud continued to grow pretty well in Q2, despite the challenging macro environment. The revenue was up 31% year-over-year, and the AI Cloud now contributed to almost 20% of the total Baidu Core revenue. We believe what differentiates Baidu AI Cloud from our peers is that we have been dedicated to integrate cloud computing with AI, so that our AI capabilities can help our customers to improve efficiency.
To be more specific, you know, as a cloud vendor, we have strong AI capabilities, where on the other side, as an AI solution provider, we have strong cloud computing compatibilities, capabilities. Also as Robin mentioned, right, so the enterprises in the public sector are the main growth driver for cloud computing for us. With that in China, the traditional enterprises in the public sector are still at the early stage of digital and intelligent transformation. Clearly, though, this transformation means organizations, no matter big or small, they want to use AI to improve their efficiency and their competitiveness, so which will further drive the demand for high-performance computing. As a result, right, the combined revenues from manufacturing, energy, utilities, and the public sector almost doubled in Q2.
In the smart transportation, we continue to leverage our leading AI technologies and the deep understanding of autonomous driving to grow our business. We see smart transportation has already become one of the largest verticals for our Baidu AI Cloud. With that, we are confident that revenues from enterprises and the public sector will continue to drive the growth of Baidu AI Cloud in the future. Also, you know, since early June, we have seen some gradual improvement in project implementation. For sure, you know, there are still some uncertainties around COVID-19 in the near term. However, we believe the strong need and the trend for AI in China remain unchanged, and with that, we aim to continue growing faster than our peers.
Yeah. Hi, Kenny. I will answer the question about margins. Baidu AI Cloud continue to generate the positive gross margins in the second quarter, same as what was in the first quarter. On top of that, we managed to improve our operating margin, thanks to our strategy to focus on quality and sustainable revenue growth. We have two parts in our AI Cloud. The first part is the personal cloud. The personal cloud contributes a small portion of the overall cloud revenue. It should continue to generate decent operating profit, and its revenue is growing a little bit slower than overall cloud. The second part, which is the majority part, is enterprise and public sector cloud, which continue to generate positive gross profit in the second quarter. We improved operating margins both on a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis.
This was because we primarily focus on high quality revenue growth and gradually we reduce the unhealthy products. I think in the future, we will work very hard to narrow the loss margins. Within enterprise and public sector cloud, the ACE Smart Transportation, which Joseph mentioned just now, already ensures a very healthy growth margin because of the higher portion of the software and AI components. I think the ACE Smart Transportation may achieve break-even earlier than any other verticals in the coming quarters, because we have focused on to provide more standardized solutions and products to, for the key use cases. For example, the urban roads, highways, and towns. Secondly, I think we are also working very hard to replicate the similar scenarios and use cases across different industries.
Cross-industry replication require the AI technology to find out the connections across many different scenarios. We believe that our AI technology, such as the large models, will help us to achieve that goal. Overall, we will continue to focus on quality and sustainable revenue growth to improve margins and reach profitability in the next few years. Thank you so much, Kenny.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Lincoln Kong of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you, management. My question is about the robotaxi. We're quite impressed that RT6 is targeting a cost of RMB 250,000 per car, and that's significantly lower than the previous generation of the taxi models. Can management help us understand what's the main driver for this cost reduction and what's the outlook for the future cost trend? How should we think about robotaxi economic mechanism under this cost? Any timeline, I think, when to expect major commercial contribution from the robotaxi business? Thanks.
Hi, Lincoln Kong, this is Robin Li. I think there are three drivers for the cost reduction. First, it's our deep knowledge in the autonomous driving technology and operations. Over the past nine years, Baidu has built strong level four technology and gained industry know-how on the auto industry and on how to operate our L4 ride-hailing services. Also, we have become the largest autonomous ride-hailing service provider in the world. We fully understand the autonomous ride-hailing market and understand our passengers' needs.
We know where we can simplify our in-car features and where we should allocate more resources. For example, RT6 is a passenger-centric vehicle, not a driver-centric vehicle. On one hand, we have reduced some in-car features designed for the driver to reduce the cost. Like I mentioned during the prepared remarks, RT6 can remove the steering wheel and exclude some other accessories such as wide display screen for drivers. On the other hand, we put more effort on safety performance and the passenger experience to make RT6 passenger-centric. For example, we have used safety redundancy in seven parts of RT6, setting an industry standard. This includes redundancy for computing unit, sensors, steering system, braking system, communication system, power supply, and auto architecture.
Also, RT6 is designed for more in-car space and better in-car experience. I also want to highlight that about 60% of RT6 BOM are for intelligent features like L4 autonomous driving capabilities. The second driver is scale. We plan to leverage third-party automakers to produce RT6 for us, so RT6 will not retrofit on a passenger vehicle. This is the key differentiator of RT6. We will pay for the BOM of RT6 instead of the retail price like what we did in the past. Why is Baidu able to move away from retrofitting vehicles to use third-party automakers to produce RT6? That's because we have the capability to offer large-scale robotaxi operation, supported by our leading autonomous driving technology and operational capability. I think the third driver is the development of the value chain for China's intelligent EV industry.
RT6 was launched at a time when China's intelligent EV industry is well built up, with many new EV companies and auto part producers in the market. In particular, many autonomous driving related auto parts are now being produced locally, so intelligent EVs are becoming more affordable than before. For the autonomous driving related auto parts, its cost is also much lower than before. For example, LIDAR. LIDAR is the most important component for autonomous driving solutions. It was charged hundreds of thousands of dollars in the beginning, but now it only costs like $1,000. In the future, we believe the BOM will for our robotaxi will continue to decrease because China's intelligent EV industry will continue to develop and Apollo Go will continue to scale. Our approach is a gradual approach.
We will continue to roll out regions in different cities, therefore scale up our robotaxi service. As we gain scale, as we improve continuously on technology, I think the cost for operating such a service will continue to drop. We certainly have the first-mover advantage and the barrier to entry for this will become higher and higher.
On to the next question, please.
The next question comes from Alicia Yap of Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good evening, management. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a follow-up questions on Apollo Go. Congratulations on some of the solid achievement recently. Can management provide some update on regulatory environment for autonomous driving and robotaxi in China, and how Baidu will capture these trends? Can management also provide updates on Baidu's goal and strategy for this fully driverless operation? Thank you.
Thanks a lot. This is Juan. Just like Robin Li said, Apollo Go is already the largest autonomous dedicated service provider in the world. In quarter two, Apollo Go has completed 287,000 rides, and the cumulative rides surpassed 1,000,000 now. This number is much higher than our peers. Our strategy is to leverage a large scale operation to improve our level four technology and grow even faster and larger. This is very important in China because the road and traffic conditions are very complicated here. The data generated from large scale operation will help us to improve our level four technology and overcome those problems.
Today, Apollo is already available in more than 10 cities, including all the Tier 1 cities in China. Our operating areas have many places, including subway stations, office buildings, and hospitals in each city. On the operations front, we're also expanding operations in each city. With the launch of RT6 at a target mass production cost of RMB 250,000, we will be able to further grow operations at a faster speed. In the future, we will continue to improve our Level four technology and grow our operation. Also, we will try to push and make our influence on China's regulation for autonomous driving. For technology, we started out to offer autonomous ride-hailing services on open roads in Wuhan on May 10. In less than three months, we were allowed to provide fully driverless ride-hailing services on the open roads.
The quick progress is for our leading technologies and capabilities. For operation in the Yizhuang region of Beijing, as Robin mentioned, we have already acquired about 10% market share for ride-hailing services in the region. On average, each robotaxi vehicle completes more than 20 rides a day. As a pioneer in the industry, Baidu has worked closely with the regulator to set up regulations and industry standards. Recently, the Chinese Ministry of Transport issued a draft of guidelines for self-driving vehicle transportation safety services. The guidelines aim to push the commercial operations for autonomous ride-hailing services in China. This is the first regulation on autonomous ride-hailing services at the central governmental level globally. It marks China's efforts in promoting high-level autonomous driving. We are proud to be the first and only company in China to offer fully driverless ride-hailing services.
In early August, Baidu was allowed to provide fully driverless ride-hailing services and Class five in Chongqing and Wuhan, two of China's major cities in the Middle West. In the future, we will continue to scale up our operation and try to push fully in driverless ride-hailing to more cities. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Eddie Leung of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.
Good evening, guys. Thank you for taking my question. I have a question about your autonomous driving solution for OEMs. So, you mentioned that the contract value after the second quarter was just over CNY 10 billion. It doesn't seem to be increasing much from the last quarterly result. Could you talk a little bit about the reason behind that? Could you also remind us some of the automakers that have been working with you guys in using your autonomous driving solutions? Thank you.
Hi, Eddie. Let me answer your questions. I think as Robin mentioned the remarks, yes, the total projected cumulative sales of our auto solutions has been CNY 10.2 billion, our own estimates. I think when people talk about the numbers, we need to keep in mind that smart EV is a trend that is irreversible. For cars, we believe that over the long term, electrification is just a part of the play, and intelligence is a game changer. In the future, EV without intelligent driving capabilities will not be competitive. Many automakers, like some leading domestic or even international automakers, they are interested in using our solutions for their models to capture this kind of new market opportunity.
Based on our conversations with them, we understand that the automakers like our AI capabilities, our insights of the autonomous drivings, and our strong brand name. We're talking with many of the automakers, both locally and globally, and some are very large names in the industry. I want to emphasize that each automaker has its own schedule for signing up the contracts with the suppliers. This could result in a different pace of our dialogue. This is absolutely normal in auto industry. As of today, we have partnered with many automakers, including some leading names like BYD, Dongfeng Motor, and so on.
In addition to our in-car infotainment solutions, more and more customers now are adopting our Apollo Self-Driving products, including the ANP products, Apollo Navigation Pilot for highways or urban roads, the Apollo Valet Parking AVP products, and HD map products. I think in the future, we will continue to expand our partnership to work with more automakers.
As more and more auto models equipped with our auto solutions are set to be launched into the market in the coming few years, the auto solutions should start generating meaningful revenues. Thank you so much, Eddie.
The next question comes from Gary Yu of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity to ask question, and congratulations on the solid results. My question is about margin and cost control and optimization. We saw that you achieved another strong quarter results with margin better than expected. Could you please elaborate the efforts you took for such encouraging result? And what is the margin outlook for the second half of the year? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks so much, Gary, and I appreciate this question. I think despite of the very challenging macro environment in Q2, Baidu Core non-GAAP operating margin was 22%, which is up five percentage points quarter-over-quarter. Over the past few months, I think we have made a lot of efforts to improve our operational efficiencies. For example, the Baidu Core SG&A was down by 12% year-over-year in the second quarter. I think our business are at different stage of development, so we have different strategies of investment for each business. For the mobile ecosystem, which is relatively mature business, our goal is to keep its profits and margins solid so that our mobile ecosystem can continue to generate the very strong cash flow to support our investments in the new AI initiatives.
I think for our new AI businesses, we will be focused on AI cloud and intelligent driving. Both of them grew very fast in the past few quarters, which you can see that. We will continue to make necessary investments as needed. As Robin stated just now, we will remain focused on healthy and sustainable revenue growth, and we aim to continue improving our operating margins in the future. Thank you so much, Gary.
Thank you.
The next question comes from James Lee of Mizuho. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions. My question's regarding Jidu, and congratulations, by the way, on your launch in June. At the same time, you guys also launched RT6. I'm just curious about maybe the positioning of Jidu and RT6. Can you guys talk about the customer segmentation strategy of the two autonomous driving vehicles? Just curious how much overlap in demand between the two? Thanks.
Yeah. This is Robin. The position for Jidu and RT6 are very different. Before I talk about Jidu, let me first talk about our strategy for intelligent driving. Our goal is to provide large scale, fully driverless ride-hailing services on open roads. This is powered by our L4 autonomous driving technology. At the same time, we use some of our L4 capabilities to put them into assisted driving features to support automakers' intelligent driving needs. Jidu is just a perfect example of such automakers. If you look at our business portfolio for intelligent driving, we have RT6. RT6 represents Baidu's best autonomous driving technology. RT6 is for large scale, fully driverless ride-hailing services on open roads. That is not, you know, consumer-facing vehicle. I mean, it's not selling to the consumers.
Jidu's RoboOne is a consumer-facing product. We put our level four technology into level three or level two plus, if you will. Jidu RoboOne will be equipped with ANP 3.0, our most advanced autonomous driving solution. ANP 3.0 can handle end-to-end intelligent driving and parking on urban roads and highways. Also, our Smart Cabin will be installed in the car. It allows Jidu to provide voice interaction inside and outside the car. We believe these new features will help us to expand our business. For the timeline, we could see everything is well on track. We could see the first mass-produced RoboOne finished very soon. This car will demonstrate Jidu's capability from design to mass production. Jidu plans to take orders for RoboOne later this year and deliver the vehicles starting 2023. Jidu has a second model.
Jidu plans to launch at the end of this year, then start taking orders in 2023 and deliver in 2024 for our second model. Yeah, that's it.
Great. Thank you.
Our last question will come from Wei Xiong of UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good evening, management. Thank you for taking my questions. First, I'm wondering if management can share some updates on your capital allocation. Could management talk a bit more on the implementation of your share buyback program and how do you balance the investments into new businesses versus doing more buybacks or dividends? Second, as we recently saw the development between the U.S. and Chinese regulators regarding the audit inspections of ADRs, could management also share your thoughts on this progress? Given some of your peers have started the process to convert into dual primary listing, I was wondering, would Baidu also consider such a U.S. Hong Kong dual primary listing status? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you for your questions. Let me clear your questions. I think as of today, we have returned about $2.9 billion to shareholders under the 2020 share repurchase program. The program authorized $4.5 billion cap, and which means we still have around $1.6 billion left in the program. Baidu will continue to buy our shares from open markets, since we quite strongly believe in our long-term developments. If you look into our balance sheets, as of Q2, our cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments were $28.3 billion. We also have the other $11.1 billion in our long-term investments.
If you look into our business today, some of them was mentioned in our previous remarks. I think for mobile ecosystem, it continues to generate very healthy profits and margins. For Baidu AI Cloud, the revenue has been growing very fast, faster than our peers in this industry. For Apollo Go, it's already the largest autonomous ride-hailing service provider in the world. Everything's pretty much on track. We believe that we are on the right direction, and we will continue to invest in ourselves. About the second question about the delisting and the primary in Hong Kong.
I think the most recent statement of the protocol signed between the PCAOB and the Chinese authorities marks the very important first step towards opening access for the PCAOB to inspect and investigate completely the registered public accounting firms in China. We think this is a very important milestone for both countries and China-based issuers with their ADRs trading in the US. Also, we can feel that the two governments are proactively seeking solutions. For Baidu, we have already the Hong Kong secondary listing, and we have some major shareholders who converted their Baidu ADR into ordinary shares in Hong Kong. Also, we're also very glad to be included in the Hang Seng Index. It will take effect on September fifth. We believe with the inclusion to the Hang Seng Index, our Hong Kong shares will receive more fund flow.
For the dual primary listing, as far as what we understand, the process of switching from the secondary to primary listing in Hong Kong should be straightforward. We don't see any kind of hurdles for us to achieve that. I think what's even more important for us is to remain focused on business fundamentals and drive long-term shareholder values. Also, Baidu will continue to comply with applicable laws in both China and the United States and try to maintain listing both in Nasdaq and Hong Kong Exchange. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
That will conclude today's question and answer session. That does conclude our conference for today. We thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.