We are initiating on Baidu (BIDU) with a BEARISH view and a SOTP-based target price of $98, implying a 5% downside from the current level.
We believe that the fragmentation of China’s mobile app landscape is driving gradual disintermediation of the search market thereby limiting the monetization upside of BIDU’s ecosystem despite the impressive DAU growth in its Baidu App. Additionally, we believe there is further downside risk to our target price given 1) the deteriorating ad outlook for its core search and newsfeed segments that lack visible path to recovery, 2) increasing