谷歌的遠水解不了百度的近渴
【英文原文】
Googling Over Baidu's Problems
When your biggest rival looks set to leave a market you already dominate, it must be good news.
Investors in Baidu, China's leading internet search engine certainly seem to think so: its shares have jumped 21.5% in the week since Google said it's considering leaving China, no longer willing to accept Beijing's strictures on search results.
In fact, Baidu's seeing enough problems of its own to suggest investors' ebullience about its prospects is overdone, even if Google's potential retreat comes at an opportune moment.
Already this month, the company has lost two senior executives, the latest being its chief technology officer. This as Baidu struggles with a change to its advertising system which, it has already forecast, will see it leave ten percentage points of potential revenue growth on the table, in the fourth quarter from the previous three months.
Its share of the Internet search engine market in China has been in decline too, as Google made ground. Baidu's share of market revenues fell to 58.4% in the last quarter of 2009, research firm Analysys estimates: still strong, but Baidu's lowest share for two and a half years.
Certainly, all of these worries could be offset by Google's departure from China. Even those who don't expect Baidu to gain all of Google's market share expect a positive impact. Credit Suisse says Baidu may only take a third of Google's lost revenues -- but that would put its market share near 70%, an enviable position in a country now boasting nearly 400 million internet users.
But with its shares already trading at over 70 times expected earnings -- three times the valuation seen a year ago -- there certainly will be better times to buy into Baidu, especially given the potential for more negative news in the short-term.
The problems with Baidu's advertising sales, for example, are likely to cloud the earnings outlook in 2010's first quarter. Nor should it be forgotten that the Google situation will take some time to reach a clear resolution.
It may be the case that Baidu's current problems prove temporary, leaving it the main beneficiary of the Google fallout. But in the Chinese Internet scene, nothing's a given right now.
【中文譯文】
要是你最大的競爭對手看起來肯定會撤出你已經佔有絕對優勢的市場，那絕對是好消息。
中國最主要的互聯網搜索引擎百度的投資者似乎就是這麼想的：自谷歌聲稱不願再接受中國政府對於搜索結果的審查、考慮撤出中國以來，百度股價一週內躍升21.5%。
事實上，即使谷歌退得正是時候，百度本身也出現了很多問題，足以表明投資者對其前景的熱心有點過頭了。
百度在這個月已經損失了兩位高管，最新一位是其首席技術官。而這正值百度因廣告系統更換而面臨困境之際，百度已經預測，其廣告系統將導致第四季度收入較前一季度增幅減少10個百分點。
隨着谷歌攻城掠地，百度在中國搜索引擎市場的份額也不斷下滑。研究公司易觀國際(Analysys)預計百度2009年第四季度收入佔市場58.4%的份額，依然堪稱強勁，但卻是百度兩年半以來最低的份額。
當然，一旦谷歌撤出中國，這些擔憂都將煙消雲散。即便認爲百度不會攫取谷歌全部市場份額的人也預期此事將對百度產生積極效應。瑞信(Credit Suisse)預計，百度只能獲得谷歌所損失收入的三分之一，這樣一來百度的市場份額將接近70%，在擁有近4億網民的中國，如此地位令人稱羨。
然而百度當前的股票預期市盈率高達70倍有餘，爲上年同期的三倍，因此當前並不是買進該股的最好時機，尤其是考慮到短期內可能還會有更多負面消息出爐。
舉例來說，百度廣告銷售方面的問題就可能爲該公司2010年第一季度收益前景蒙上陰影。另外別忘了，谷歌事件也需要一些時間才能明朗化。
還有一種可能是，百度當前的問題或許是暫時的，最終它將成爲谷歌事件的最大受益者。但在中國互聯網行業，現在是一切皆不好說。
