According to a research report published by Yamato, the Baidu Chatbot Humanity Language (ERNIE) daily API may exceed 50 million. Most of these are developed within the group, but external applications are also growing rapidly. Direct revenue from artificial intelligence products from external customers accounted for 4.8% of cloud revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023. Management expects AI revenue to accelerate throughout the year, and cloud revenue is expected to grow by double digits year over year. The bank expects 10.4% growth this year. Additionally, management mentioned that Alibaba Cloud's recently initiated price cuts may have limited impact on Baidu Cloud's business.

The bank said it is slightly optimistic about the growth rate of Baidu's core marketing business driven by Wenxin's words, and raised its growth forecast for this year from 6% to 8%. The bank believes that current artificial intelligence-driven advertising technology will bring an annual increase of 2 to 3 percentage points for the Group's core marketing based on China's GDP growth. The bank pointed out that the group is working to improve the functions of artificial intelligence chatbots to overcome existing search flaws and increase conversion rates in the long term. The bank believes that the Group's share repurchases may accelerate this year, and that an active shareholder return policy may attract investors in the short term. The bank raised the Group's revenue forecast for 2024-26 by 1 to 2%, and increased the profit forecast for the period by 2 to 3%, reaffirming the “buy” rating. The target price increased slightly from HK$152 to HK$153.