Earnings Call: Q3 2015

Oct 30, 2015

Earnings release

Hello, and thank you for standing by for the BeiDou's Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's conference, Ms. Sharon Ng, Badi's Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Baidi's Q3 2015 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. Today, you will hear from Robin Li, Baidu's Chief Executive Officer and Jennifer Li, Baidu's Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks, Robin and Jennifer will answer your questions. Before we continue, please note that the discussion today will contain forward looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U. S. 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. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those outlined in our public filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20 F. 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 include discussions of certain unaudited non GAAP financial measures. Our press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non GAAP measures to be unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures and is available on our IR website at irbytes.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 Baidu's CEO, Robin Li. Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining today's call. In the Q3 of 2015, we made tremendous progress toward building the next Baidu and creating search of the future. We see a future in which local and services take on increasing importance and our search offering will connect directly with transactions to meet the fast evolving needs of our users. We offer an ever more powerful integrated platform to help an even broader base of merchants reach customers. In the 3rd quarter, Baidu showed strength in key operational metrics. Mobile revenue compressed 54% of our total revenue, up from 37 a year ago. Mobile search accounted for nearly 2 thirds of total search traffic on Baidu. China and its Internet users are squarely in the mobile era, and Baidu has the platform, reach and breadth of mobile products to serve their needs. We continue to expand our solid mobile foundation with mobile search monthly active users at 6 43,000,000 for the month of September 2015, up from 629,000,000 in June. Mobile map MAUs meanwhile were 326,000,000 for the month of September, up from $304,000,000 in June. And GMV for transaction services, formerly named O2O and Other, totaled RMB60.2 billion for Q3 2015, an increase of 119% year over year. This notable momentum reflects our strong execution capability and the powerful platform and resources that we leverage to capture a local services market still at the budding stage of online penetration. At the end of September, we launched the Local Express, an exciting initiative to further connect search and maps to transactions. I'll now talk more about later talk more about Local Express. About the search services, our core search business remains very robust and continues to provide a solid, profitable base of operations that enables us to move decisively and aggressively to capture the enormous opportunities in local and transaction services. The quarter saw notable improvements in the monetization capability of both mobile and PC, with mobile showing particular strength as we implemented new initiatives such as improved mobile search user interface and more personalized and image enhanced sponsored links and search results. The sum of these initiatives drove mobile monetization higher as mobile CPM continue to narrow the gap with PC. At our Baidu World Conference in September, we unveiled Duo, our intelligent, voice based assistant that can do things for users in the real world, from making dining recommendations, finding discounts and ordering food to buying movie tickets to answering sophisticated questions. Duo represents a kind of sneak peek into the future of search, where voice activation, artificial intelligence and services all come together. About transaction services, we shared our vision of connecting people with services. This transaction is a natural extension of our lead generation search advertising model. I'm proud to report that we gained significant momentum in transaction services this quarter, as demonstrated by our strong growth in GMV. Nomi grew GMV 4 75% year over year, and Baidu takeout delivery grew GMV nearly 12 fold year over year. Ultimately, what Baidu is building and offering is much broader than a daily deal spend. We are creating an online marketing and transaction services platform, bringing to bear the power of our entire platform across search, maps, nomi, takeout delivery and Baidu Wallet. Our platform benefits from shared synergies with traffic and data from search and maps, enhancing the growth of our newer products. As you know, the competitive landscape in O2O saw further consolidation this month. Maju's resolve and commitment to winning the O2O market remains unshaken. A small slaver, less than 5% of the local high frequency transaction services market, namely restaurant and local entertainment, is online today. Baidu can win this market because our core value proposition to our users and merchants is differentiated from our peers. We increasingly enable users to make decisions about local offline consumption from our huge example, in Q3, approximately 10% of mobile search queries and about 1 third of queries in maps are related to local services. Baidu has the platform and capability to convert these queries into transactions. For example, in MAPS, as of October, over 1,000,000 point of interest already enable and have completed closed loop transactions with the final step of payment completed through either Baidu Wallet or another online payment provider. Our platform approach creates a unified, seamless user experience with the end to end discovery, service and payment all happening on one platform in a closed loop. Our knowledge of our users join on the power of big data let us make intelligent recommendations based on user behavior, their expressed preferences and even from some unexpected statistical correlations. For example, between the car a person drives and her propensity to eat Western food, between a user's zip code and his price preference for a meal or between a search queries and the type of food or movies she likes. The entirety of Baidu's platform can help merchants to grow their business and operate with greater efficiency with low startup costs. Baidu not only helps merchants acquire new customers through search, maps and Noemi, but we also help them build lasting relationships with existing consumers through programs such as membership plus and store value cards on Nomi. Takeout delivery helps bring incremental orders to merchants and help them increase their operational efficiency. Baidu Wallet helps merchants streamline the payment process, thus enabling them to turnaround a transaction faster. An exciting new initiative is Local Express, which merges Baidu's online marketing with our transaction services offering for local merchants, all in one easy turnkey solution. Local Express, available only to Baidu Noemi merchants, empowers local merchants by helping them attract new customers and complete transactions without high start up costs or the need for infrastructure. With Local Express, we help Noemi merchants get discovered by pushing rich content related to their bins, such as image, location, distance and promotions. In a performance based ad in the format of a card in mobile Baidu or Maps. With one click on the card, the user lands directly on the Noomi merchant page and completes the transaction with just a few more clicks. Merchants don't need a domain name or rent servers or buy any cloud based computing power. Baidu hosts it all. This easy tool gives merchants not only a faster, simpler way to build their online presence, but a better means of creating a true omnichannel presence beyond their brick and mortar existence. With over 40,000,000 SMEs in China without websites, the opportunity for Local Express and Nomi is immense. Now for the progress on Nomi and takeout delivery. Nomi's momentum has been terrific with GMV more than doubling quarter on quarter, growing nearly 4x than the industry. Nomi is a top player in the movie ticket vertical and accounts for 15% of all movie theater tickets sold in China as of the end of September. Momi has expanded its merchant base to nearly 700,000 and covers over 400 cities. We are finding that both the number of transactions per user as well as ARPU per quarter continue to trend up. Baidu takeout delivery saw GMV nearly triple quarter on quarter and has the highest ARPU among its peers. Takeout delivery targets the attractive working age demographic who value higher food quality and faster delivery time. Baidu takeout delivery leads in 63 cities by working age demographic according to our internal analysis. Superior multi point to multi point We will train this core competence in logistics by leveraging our leading maps, data and technology. Baidu Wallet has continued to grow impressively reaching 45,000,000 activated accounts and adding 10,000,000 as of the end of September in Q3. In a race to capture the opportunity, Baidu, along with the rest of the industry, has used promotional subsidies to feed the market and shape user behavior. Baidu has approached this resource deployment strategically, always looking to build lasting core competencies and sustainable advantage. We are confident our vast platform resources and constant leveraging of data resources will over time to drive more efficient ROI than our peers. We use our big data capabilities to segment and target users and look to make full use of our data resources to target even more intelligently and make personalized recommendations to our users. IQIYI has broken away from the rest of the pack through differentiated content and a unique business and distribution model. IQIYI is a powerful content distribution platform and in an industry first, popular shows like Shushan Wars were broadcast on IT before making it to television broadcast. Popular self produced shows include Xi Pao Su and the Great Robbers Chronicles have become runaway hits. And iQIYI now plans to invest 50% of its resources in creating more self produced content to contemplate the acquired licensed content, such as films from Lionsgate, with whom iQIYI recently signed a licensing deal. IQIYI now has the largest number of paying subscribers with an explosive growth of subscription revenue. Earlier this week, we announced a share exchange transaction with Ctrip, whereby we exchanged the majority of our stake in Chuna for a 25% voting stake in Ctrip. We look forward to working Ctrip on product integration with our search, maps, normie and Baidu Wallet products to give our users even wider access to online travel content and services. We have been very happy with Tunar and its superb management team and we expect to continue our existing business cooperation with Tunar. We see tremendous potential ahead for the industry and remain very committed to online travel space. We look forward to working with Ctrip and Xunar to grow the industry together to enhance the online travel user experience in China. At the end of Q3, we and look forward into coming quarters. We are even more confident and excited about the prospects for Baidu as we carve into this massive new opportunity. We are just beginning to link the pieces of our existing platform together to create ever larger opportunities for this company as we continue to build the next Baidu. The levels of investment we've committed are substantial, but beyond doubt by the market. We've been here before, facing a few of strong competitors, their eyes all on an unfathomably large price and we've continuously proven ourselves. Finally, we are very excited to welcome Mr. Brent Kalinikos and Mr. Yuan Qing Yang to Baidu's Board of Directors. Their extensive leadership experience and industry expertise will bring significant value to Baidu as the company moves into its next stage of growth. With that, I'll now hand over to Jennifer, who can update you on the financials. Thank you, Robin. Hello, everyone. We reported a solid quarter with growth again driven predominantly by mobile. We're still in the very early innings of unlocking mobile's potential. We see a long runway for growth in mobile search, driven by traffic growth, upward trending monetization and the new incremental local SME merchant customer base. In addition, transaction services, an opportunity in its is showing great promise and has demonstrated very strong momentum. This strong momentum gives us the confidence to continue investing in the next Baidu. These investments are tracked and measured carefully, and we keep a close eye on ROI. As Robin mentioned a bit earlier, our platform, technology and data, coupled with the financial investments, will over time drive more efficient ROI than our peers. Our gateway products of search and maps, our infrastructure products of Baidu Wallet, Baidu Connect and Local Express and our transaction services products of Nomi and takeout delivery will all build upon each other and elevate the strength of the Baidu platform in its entirety. We look forward to executing on our plan and sharing the progress with the investment community. Starting last quarter, we provided additional disclosure of our business and margin impact of major investment areas. From this quarter onward, to more accurately define our reporting settings, we have renamed core search to search services and O2P to other to transaction services. The underlying products in those reporting segments remain unchanged. Search services margins remain very robust, in the line with the 50s margin levels I shared last quarter, and we expect those margins to be in that range going forward. On a consolidated basis, transaction services had a negative margin impact of 32 percentage points on our overall non GAAP margins. IQIYI, on a standalone basis, further impacted our overall non GAAP measures by 5.4 percentage points. Chinar's quarterly financials contribute 6% to 7% of Baidu's overall revenue and have a 4 point operating margin drag for Baidu's overall financials. With the transaction announced earlier this week, we expect only 1 month of impact in the Q4. As we announced today, our Board has authorized us to commence a repurchase of up to US2 $1,000,000,000 of our shares over the next 24 months. This decision is consistent with our overall capital allocation framework and our primary use of capital remain reinvestments in the business to drive long term shareholder value. Now moving to the financials. All monetary amounts in RMB unless stated otherwise. For the Q3, total revenues were RMB18.4 billion, representing a 36% increase year over year. During the Q3, Baidu had approximately 623,000 active online marketing customers, a 21% increase from the corresponding period in 2014 and a 6% increase from the previous quarter. Revenue per online marketing customers for the 3rd quarter was approximately 28,300, a 9% increase from the corresponding period in 20 14 and a 3% increase from the previous quarter. Traffic acquisition cost as a component of cost of revenue in Q3 was CNY24 CNY2.4 billion or 13.1 percent of total revenues compared to 12.9 percent in the corresponding period in 2014. Bandwidth and depreciation costs as a percent of revenues in Q3 were 5.3% and 3.6%, respectively, comparing to 5.6% and 3.8% in the corresponding period in 2014. Content cost as a component of cost revenues were CNY 914 point 5,000,000, representing 5% of total revenues compared to 3.7% in the corresponding period in 2014. This increase was mainly due to iQIYI's increased content cost. As indicated in the earlier part of the year, we expect content cost to increase as a percent of total revenue, and that will exhibit in Q4. Selling, general and administrative expenses in Q3 were RMB5.7 billion, an increase of 111% year over year. The increase was primarily due to an increase in promotional spending for transaction services. R and D expenses in Q3 were RMB2.7 billion, an increase of 47% over the corresponding period in 2014. The increase was primarily due to an increase in the number of research and development personnel. Share based compensation expenses, which were allocated to related operating costs and expense line items, increased in aggregate to CNY400 1,000,000 in the 3rd quarter from CNY234 1,000,000 in the corresponding period in 2014. SBC increased due to more shares being granted to Baidu employees. Operating profit for Q3 was CNY2.5 billion, a decrease of 36% over Q3 2014. Total headcount on a consolidated basis, including invested entities, was about RMB 50,650 as of the end of Q3. This is flat from the end of the second quarter. Income tax Income tax expenses were CNY590.5 million from the 3rd quarter for the 3rd quarter. The effective tax rate for the Q3 was 19.4 percent compared to 15.5% in Q3 2014. Net income attributable to the Q3 Q3 were CNY2.8 billion, a 27% decrease from the corresponding period in 2014. Basic and diluted earnings attributable to Baidu per ADS for the 3rd quarter amounted to Baidu 7.94 and Baidu, respectively. Net income attributable to Baidu, excluding share based compensation expenses, a non GAAP measure, for Q3 were CNY3.2 billion, a 21% decrease year over year. Basic and diluted earnings attributable to Baidu per ADS, excluding share based compensation expenses, both non GAAP measures were RMB9.09 and RMB9.07, respectively. As of Q3, the company had cash, cash equivalents and short term investments of CNY7.1 billion. Net operating cash inflow and capital expenditures for the 3rd quarter were CNY4.8 billion and CNY1.9 billion, respectively. Now let me provide you with our top line guidance for the Q4 of 2015. We currently expect total revenue for the Q4 to be between CNY18.2 billion and CNY18.75 1,000,000,000, representing a CNY 29.5 percent to CNY 33.4 percent year over year increase. Pursuant to Baidu's exchange of Baidu's current and preliminary view and is subject to change. I will now open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. The question and answer session of this conference call will start in a moment. In order Thank you. We will now take the first question from Mr. Alan Hallowell from Deutsche Bank. Please ask your question, Alan. Fantastic. Thank you very much. It seems as though some of the impressive margin upside in the Q3 relates to R and D costs. And I'm just curious, what should we think of modeling for product development costs going forward? I know that there was a hiring freeze. And related to that, SG and A seems to be coming in below a trajectory relative to the original second half guide of 80% to 90%. Would a revision of that be merited given the lower spend? Thank you. Hi, Alan. Thank you for your questions. With regards to R and D expenses, as you can see, R and D continues to represent a steady and slightly increasing percent of the overall percent of the overall revenue. It is an important component of cost for us, and we continue to put a lot of emphasis on R and D investments and capabilities. For the whole year, we don't expect that to change, but going forward, as we step into next year, we will give you guidance when the data and we're ready to do so. For SG and A expenses, I think there might be we provided guidance last quarter that the second half is going to be 80% to 90% increase compared to the first half. The plan remains intact, and we're executing accordingly. So we're tracking our budget plans, and we're executing on that. And so there might be a little bit of timing differences. Going into Q4, bear in mind that we will have consolidated results for Tienar for 1 month. And for the 2 months that we do not consolidate Tienar, there will be Tienar, there will be margin improvements as indicated in my prepared remarks. The overall margin for Tienar on Baidu's margin drag for a quarter is about 4 points. Thank you. Thank you. And your next question comes from Mr. Eddie Leung from Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question, Eddie. Good morning. Just a question about the transaction business. We have seen very strong growth of GMV in normie and food delivery. So just wondering how much of that is driven purely by volume? And have we seen any change in the ASP per order in normally as well as food delivery? Thank you. Yes, the ASP for food delivery has been trending up gradually. For Nuomi, I think Huomi has been stable in terms of ASP. It's pretty much volume. But I think the 2 bins are still at its very early stage. We are not really driving the ASP at this point. We're more driving the volume, the efficiency, the coverage for merchants and forming a payment habit for our users. Well understood. Thank you, Robert. Thank you. And your next question comes from Mr. Tiyush Mumbloy from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question, Mr. Tiyush. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. A question for you, Robin. With the changes in the industry structure and travel, you've earned a chance of dominating a proven vertical, and you have links in place with several important partners. What are the changes you'd like to see in this industry in the next couple of quarters or years? And how do you tend to how are you thinking of approaching it? As you know that we now have a partnership relation with Ctrip as well as Tunar. This actually opens up a lot more travel product and services to Baidu users. So in the coming quarters, we will be working with these teams to integrate all kinds of travel products with Baidu platform services, namely Mobile Baidu, Baidu Maps, Baidu No Mi. This kind of omni channel presence on the local on the travel products will not only enhance Baidu user experience, but also open up a lot of opportunities for the travel companies to either attract new customers or provide existing customers better access. So going forward, I think that the integration between the platform tools and services, such as the Baidu apps and the travel services will be a big change going forward. And the next question comes from Ms. Alicia Yap from Barclays. Hi. Thank you. Good morning, Robin, Jennifer and Sharon. Thanks for taking my questions. My question is related to the transaction service GMV. So can you give us some color that what is the typical order value per transaction for your normie and takeout delivery? And then what is the percentage of the transaction volume now still attached with some sort of discount or rebate compared to the percentage of transaction with the rebate last quarter? And then if you can also give some color in terms of recurring rate for the active users sequentially from the Q2 to the Q3? Thank you. Like I said, this is still at the very early stage. We would rather not to break down this kind of details as we are still fine tuning all kinds of parameters. But on a qualitative basis, I would say that the users of Nuomi are quite loyal the users of takeout delivery are very loyal too. They keep coming back to spend on our platform. I I would say a super majority of the transactions are these subsidies right now, but that's the common practice of this industry at this point. We do hope that going forward, this will change. But ultimately, we are working to improve the operating efficiency and the ROI for our subspace so that we will become more competitive. Thank you. And the next question comes from Mr. Dick Wei from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question, Dick. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I guess Baidu has done very well in the O2O strategy with very fast growth in GMV and Tuna is a big part of that. I think after the share exchange, how can we ensure the success continue all the stakeholder of China continue to enjoy the success? Maybe in particular, I think even though Baidu is no longer a direct shareholder in China, how can Baidu ensure China continues to maximize the revenue potential and profitability and China shareholders and minority shareholders continue to share it without any leakage to other parties? Hi, Dick. Thank you for your question. With the transaction, Chinar will continue to operate as an independent company. It has really a solid management team and a great track record of execution. I think going forward, this by this transaction, Baidu does have more access to the content and provide fuller user experience, as Robbie indicated earlier. I think also there will be more alliance and synergies by working across the different platforms. So all parties can really focus on driving a bigger development and faster development of the overall travel vertical pie and be very constructive in building that vertical. And I think that this transaction is quite good for all shareholders related. It helped improve efficiency, it builds synergy and it allows the efforts to really focus on developing the vertical and really making an online platform a better tool for the offline traditional sector players. So going forward, I think the parties can join forces and really work on building constructive forces to develop the vertical. Great. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you. And your next question comes from Ms. Wendy Huang from Macquarie. Ms. Wendy, ask your question. Thank you. I just want to get some clarification on the Q3 and Q4 numbers. So excluding that one month impact from China in the Q4, what would be the Q4 revenue guidance? And also, what was revenue from the transaction based service in Q3 and what did you actually step in your Q4 guidance? The reason I asked this is because I'm not quite sure if you are actually making any net revenue out of those transactions given that the take rate is quite low and subsidy is quite high? Thank you. As I indicated earlier, Tienar's quarterly contribution for revenue is between 6 percent to 7% of Baidu's consolidated total revenue. And so that will be a quarter. And so we consolidate only for 1 month, and you can just ballpark estimate what would be a 2 month impact of that. And also, as you noted, for transaction services, yes, we're in the early days of building that sector. We do not really have meaningful revenues accounted for as you see for Q3 or into Q4. So that is not an element. Thanks, Jennifer. I will go back to the queue. Thank you. And your next question comes from Ms. Erica Poon Wirtgen from UBS. Ms. Erica Poon, just please ask your question. Great. Thank you. Among your various businesses, I'm just wondering if Robin could just share with us how you rank them according to the long term growth prospects for Baidu? And also does the way you have been investing or you will be investing reflect that ranking? Thank you. Well, right now, our business basically has 3 different categories. 1 is core search business and the second is transaction services and third is the online video part, primarily IT. I would say all 3 of them have great future, great growth potential, but at different stages. I think search, we have been working on search for many, many years. It's the most profitable business for us and while still enjoying many years of growth going forward. Transaction services is the biggest bet we are doing right now. It does not give us much revenue. It's losing a lot of money right now. But we think going forward, it will become more and more important and will become part of our search business, it will integrate with the search business going forward. I have been saying that in the past, search is connecting people with information. In the future, it will also connect people with services. So for the investment in services, it's really not only offensive, but also a defensive play for us. We would expect FICO search apps to get services and then we'll be able to take a cut off it. So you can see that in the long run, this 2 will become 1. And IT is a bit different in terms of product. It's pretty much advertising model, although the subscription service is also growing quite quickly. It's also losing money, but growing very, very fast. We're very happy about the progress, but it's a relatively small part of our business. And your next question comes from Mr. Thomas Chong from Citigroup. Mr. Thomas Chong, please ask your question. Hi, thanks management for taking my questions. Questions. The first question is about the competitive landscape for the online video going forward after we are seeing Alibaba proposed to buy out your good to do? And the second question is about the cloud computing initiatives. We have seen Microsoft, Google, Amazon are all working on this front. Any color about the strategy for Baidu on cloud computing? Thanks. Yes. On the online video, as I mentioned, it's a fast growing sector, but it's still not making money. We've been investing in this for quite a few years, maybe 5 or 6 years, and we will continue to invest aggressively. I think we have proven ourselves, although IT started much, much earlier than its main competitor much, much later than its main competitors. It has been growing faster. And if you look at all the major metrics, we have surpassed them. And I do expect that this kind of growth will continue. For the cloud computing, right now, our focus is pretty much to serve our ecosystem, namely our users and our customers who need our cloud computing services. We have not provided any the so called public cloud for non related parties. I see. Thanks, Robin. Thank you. And your next question comes from Mr. Chi Sang from HSBC. Please ask your question, Mr. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I had a question on Newomi. So the market seems to think that when you subsidize, you gain users and you gain GMV. Can you give us some examples of how tactically you're using promotion to drive campaigns and also then how you retain these users? Yes. Right now, it's very common to use sub days to attract users and generate GMV. But I think for Baidu, we enjoy another unique advantage, which is our platform, mobile platform, mobile Baidu and mobile maps. From those services that we mentioned both in the release and prepared remarks, the MAU in the 100 of millions level. So we have much, much broader access to potential customers. So we can use that to reach out to our customers. And I expect once the subsidy becomes less common, we will actually be able to attract more users on our platform. We think on the other hand, we think subsidy is necessary because that will help us to acquire new users and help them to form a habit of spending on the mobile phone before they go out to the offline merchants. So it's a very complicated process and involves lots of areas that we need to make sure that the operation is efficient enough and there are also technologies that involves recommendations or cross selling. We need to make sure that people who buy certain type of services can also be recommended for services that they would also be interested. These are the areas that I think can leverage our strengths both in terms of Baidu's brand reach and technology. Operator, we're ready for the next question. Thank you. And your next question comes from Mr. Ming Zhao from 86 Research. Ming Zhao, please ask your question. Hi, good morning. This is Joanne Lin on behalf of Ming Zhao. I have one question regarding your guidance. If adding back to your Q4 guidance, it seems that your guidance implies a revenue growth acceleration in the Q4 versus Q3. I'm wondering what are the reasons for the strong guidance. Is it from a rebalancing online marketing business or is it because of a strong growth from iQIYI subscription revenue? Thank you. Yes. I think as we provided our Q4 guidance, it's our view for the current outlook. We do have very solid search service and in Q4, we do expect that our IT will have very solid performance. Partially, it is related to subscription business. And I also indicated earlier, content cost will step up, and we do expect a lot of high quality content coming online and also that drives the top line growth for IT as well. Thank you, James. If I could follow-up, I'm just wondering what is advertisers' sentiment towards next year? And have you seen any impact from the macro slowdown towards the sentiment? So far at this point, I think we feel things are going normally, and we do not see any meaningful changes in the overall horizon. Bear in mind, the search is a very diversified we serve very diversified customer base. And I think we are quite resilient in good times and bad. And so I think overall, the business is we don't really feel anything major compared to the macro environment. Thank you, Jennifer. I'll get back to the queue. Thank you. And your next question comes from Ms. Cynthia Yang from Jefferies. Ms. Cynthia Yang, please ask your question. Thank you, management, to give me this My question is on the Ctrip deal. With the new stake and partnership with Ctrip and your leadership in the online travel space. How will Baidu's O2O transaction services strategy change in order to leverage this leadership position in the online travel space? And then specifically, do you expect the O2O investment to have higher return and efficiency as a result? And back to your RMB20 1,000,000,000 commitment on O2O that was made before this deal substantiated. Is there any change on that number? Thank you. There will be no change on the RMB20 1,000,000,000 commitment. It's pretty much about Nuomi. It does not include Xunar or those controlled companies. Now that with the Ctrip partnership, we our primary goal is to broaden the product and service offerings in travel. We do not have a clear idea on the revenue and profitability impact yet. But I think as time pass by, as we further integrate this kind of travel services with existing Baidu platform, the user experience will be better and they will come back more. So we will benefit more directly or indirectly. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Mr. Ben Lin from Morgan Stanley. My question actually relates to mobile search monetization. Based on the traffic and revenue breakdown, is it fair to say that mobile monetization now is probably at about 60% of PC and hence that reflects an improvement over the last quarter because I remember that you gave a figure about 50%. If that's the case, can you just share with us in terms of what are the key drivers? Are you seeing growth in pay clicks, in a CPC trend? And also can you provide some color which category is actually growing faster in mobile versus PC? Thank you. Yes, I think the gap for monetization between mobile and PC continue to narrow. It's actually both the CPC and number of clicks are improving. This is a trend that will continue for quite a while because we think mobile is the way to go and we continue to invest in the monetization capabilities in mobile. So it will improve over time and we believe eventually we'll be able to catch up with PC or even surpass that of PC. Your next question comes from Ella Jai from China Renaissance. I have a question relating to the strategy of Nomi. Now the 2 largest group companies in China, Meituan and Damping have merged. In future, if we see this merged company started to take down the rebates and coupons. Would Nomi also follow suit and take this opportunity to improve your margin? Or would normie continue to provide deep discounts and rebates with a target to gain market share? Thank you. I think the heavy safety in this industry is not sustainable. It will gradually go down over time. And we hope to really compete on the basis of operating efficiency on technology, on reach, on brand, on service quality rather than subsidies. Operator, we'll take the last two questions now. Thank you. The next question comes from Mr. Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer. Please ask your question, Jason. This is Bo, asking question on behalf of Jason. Congratulations for the strong quarter. And my first question is regarding to the other revenue. So if my calculation is correct, I think the 700 year over year growth is kind of can backward derive the ARPU ARPU around RMB100 per paid user. So that number is a little bit high to us. According to normally, it's around RMB20 per user subscription online on the iQIYI's website. So I just want to have an idea how should we think about a strong monetization capability there? And the second question is, how should we think of is that a possibility that Baidu will take advantage and opportunity and to replicate the similar strategy on Xunar and Ctrip's partnership on other sectors such as O2O or even online video to our consolidated industry? Thank you. I will take your question on the revenue for other services. Predominantly, the biggest component is related to the subscription revenue that we collect from iQIYI. But bear in mind, in that number, basically those are non online marketing related service. So included in those are would also be front user facing kind of revenue that we earn, including some of the user music service and some subscription service revenues for cloud, for takeout, food delivery fees. So a little element of that. You are correct that it is predominantly subscription fee, but it's not all subscription related and there's also a component related to the a little bit of component related to the transaction services. Yes. On the consolidation opportunities being O2O and online video, we do see tremendous potential going forward in these areas, and we also see strong synergy between the core search business and O2O as well as online. But we will keep an open mind and from time to time to evaluate opportunities that arises. Thank you. And the next question comes from Mr. Jin Yoon from Mizuho Securities. Please ask your question Jin. Yes. Just a real quick follow-up. On regards to D and Ping and Meituan merger, how does that impact your overall how you see your overall growth in other revenues? That's my first question. And also related to the deal, I know that you mentioned that it doesn't really change the 20,000,000,000 dollars kind of target on the SG and A. But does this merger necessarily change how you invest going forward in terms of driving market share and mind share? Thanks guys. As I mentioned, transaction service revenue is really not a big material number for us at this stage. Obviously, the business itself has a business model and there will be a take rate that we collect. But at this point, that is not it's very early stage. So that is the consolidation at this point is not impacting the transaction revenue per se. Yes. On the investment strategy for Nu, I mean, I don't think there's going to be a big change. We'll continue to focus on operating efficiency, focus on merchant coverage, focus on user experience and using technology to acquire new customers, also using our brand, our platform to attract new customers. We will play out with our strength to further grow the loan agents. Great. Thanks, guys. Thank you. And the final question today comes from Tian Hou from T. H. Capital. Please ask your question. Ms. Tian Hou, your line is open. Please ask your question. Can you hear me? Hello? Yes. Yes, we can hear you. Can you hear me? Hello? Hello? Please go ahead. Yes. Yes. Can you hear me? We can definitely hear you. Okay. Good. So my question is related to two quick questions. Why is it related to the deal between you and the Ctrip? And in the press release, I saw one item, which is a Tiena employee, they can convert their shares into Ctrip shares. And I don't see anywhere else regarding the other majority shareholders. Are they going to also have the options to convert their shares into Ctrip shares? So that actually is the question I've been asked by a lot of the investors on the street. So that's why I want to bring that up. Second question is really related to your O2O. It's kind of a messy in the marketplace and we felt like the users tend to really focus on rebates instead of brands. So one question for that is how much of those 60,000,000,000 transactions are actually transacted on your wallet, Baidu Wallet? And do you see the transaction on wallet on your Baidu Wallet to continue to grow? And how many use how much the frequency of each users has been increased? Are they using more your wallets? Are they coming back to use it? So that's the question. So on the Ctrip deal, I think going forward, there are all kinds of possibilities for the rest of the China shareholders. We just don't know the outcome yet. On the O2O, I think the share for Baidu Wallet continues to grow very rapidly, although it's still not the majority of the transactions yet, the frequency is also going up. So all kinds of metrics are trending in a healthy way, we are very happy that we have this kind of transaction scenarios that can bring in Baidu Wallet and we do think that fully integrated experience between the O2O services, the platform that attracts users and the payment part, We are probably the only company in China that owns this kind of fully owns this kind of user experience from query to transaction.