Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) is setting itself up to challenge new all-time highs after its quarterly earnings report. With how late this earnings report was compared to prior years, it seems somewhat surprising — and relieving — that the news was so strong. Still, the numbers are what they are and the company is seeing a surge on the news. Growth in mobile and in total revenues are helping Baidu trump the higher operating expenses.

Total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2013 were up 50.3% and at the equivalent of $1.573 billion. Operating profit in the fourth quarter was down 3.8% to $452.6 million.

Net income attributable to Baidu in the fourth quarter of 2013 was $459.9 million, down 0.4%. The company’s operating income per share on a normalized basis was report as $1.39 per share for the quarter, or $1.30 per share on a net basis. The earnings for the year 2013 per share from operations outside of items was $5.19.

The online search engine giant in China gave guidance of $1.526 billion to $1.573 billion in revenues for the first quarter of 2014. This represents a gain of 54.8% to 59.5% versus a year earlier. Baidu’s Chairman and CEO Ron Li called 2013 a milestone year with a solid fourth quarter performance, with an entrance into new areas and significant progress in mobile. On the mobile efforts he said:

Our efforts to drive mobile adoption among customers gained significant traction throughout the year. In the fourth quarter, mobile accounted for over 20% of total revenues.

Highlights in the quarter were as follows:

• Online market revenue up 50.5% to $1.563 billion.
• Revenue per online marketing customer of $3,452, up 34.8%.
• Traffic acquisition cost as a component of cost of revenues was $194.3 million — 12.3% of total revenues versus 9.6% a year earlier.
• Selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses were up 135% to $307.7 million.
• Research and development expenses were up 80% to $208.8 million.

Baidu reported that its cash and cash equivalents came to $6.348 billion at the end of 2013. The shares closed up 1.6% at $172.90 on Wednesday and the after-hours reaction has shares challenging $187.00. Be advised that $185.50 was the prior 52-week high. Make that an all-time high.

PLEASE NOTE: All figures are represented in dollars; earnings estimates were not readily available at the time of the report so this report and guidance do not include the relative analyst estimates.

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