Toby Bordelon

Ad revenue is growing for the most part.

Cloud AI revenue for Baidu is not yet large enough to offset the decline they're seeing.

That's a problem.

Worsening, overall margins are under serious pressure because the parts of the business that are growing, that they're investing in, are lower margin.

They have to grow faster to offset the bottom line impact.

toss-on concerns about the overall macro economy in China.

And Baidu is just not that compelling to me.

Now, you might say, look, hey, the thesis here is AI growth.

I get that, maybe.

But management is telling us, don't expect serious returns there anytime soon.

So, we've got a declining core business, a low-margin growth business, and an uncertain future of what AI could, if it does become a meaningful growth driver here, what it could be, and how profitable it's going to be at scale.

For me, the upside here is just not justifying the risk I see.

Yeah, my big concern here is, you're right, there is potential.

But big picture, if you have to be a lot more optimistic than management is being to make a reasonable bull case, I feel like that's a sign there are probably better opportunities elsewhere for your investment capital.

Honestly, Jason, I'd stay away from both of them.

Once upon a time, I actually had a very small investment in iQiyi, but I gave up on that when it was clear that this was going nowhere.

Look, Baidu already owns 45% of that business.

If you really, really want to invest in it, you could just do it that way.

As it turns out, it's been terrible for

Baidu, too.