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Research Alert: CFRA Maintains Hold Opinion On Shares Of Baidu

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CFRA, an independent research provider, has providedwith the following research alert. Analysts at CFRA have summarized their opinion as follows:

We keep our 12-month target at USD150, on a P/E of 16.5x our 2027 EPADS view, near peers. We lower our 2026 EPADS estimate to CNY50.87 from CNY55.39 and 2027's to CNY60.72 from CNY62.50. BIDU's full-stack AI capabilities, spanning from Kunlunxin chips and cloud infrastructure to ERNIE foundation models and end-user applications, provide a significant competitive advantage through end-to-end optimization and superior cost and performance. We think that BIDU will see strong demand for AI inference workloads led by AI agents and applications, which plays directly to its strengths in GPU cloud and its MaaS platform. We also see margins benefiting as GPU cloud is structurally more profitable than traditional CPU cloud. We view BIDU's international expansion efforts, including Apollo Go's entry into European and Middle Eastern markets and the launch of an overseas digital human platform targeting global e-commerce, as important growth catalysts. Still, elevated spending needs and fair valuation keep us neutral.

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