Yahoo today announced that it has met its earnings expectations. Terry Semel will talk to us about what the second quarter entailed and what is coming up for Yahoo!.

5:14 p.m. -- Terry Semel is spending some time doing the usual CEO thang, rattling off a list of all the successes Yahoo! has made, including

• signing a global relationship with a global mobile broadband operator
• signing a relationship with Helio for one-click access to Yahoo! from the Helio Handspring
• having more than half a billion monthly users on Yahoo!-branded pages
• excluding Japan, up 28% year-over-year in users
• highest share of time spent on the internet in the U.S. -- Yahoo! is "the only company among our competitors that has grown users per minute in the last quarter," a big increase in "engagement"

5:17 p.m. -- He believes Yahoo! is the best choice for the world's leading advertisers. He "expects to outgrow the segment" in 2006. Evidence: revenue from the company's top 200 graphical advertisers is growing 40% year-over-year, including a majority of the top 100 advertisers according to Ad Age. He gives notice to those who aren't advertising on Yahoo! in a silly and gratuitous move -- are advertisers listening to this call? Umm... really?

5:19 p.m. -- Yahoo! is ("and always has been") committed to protecting from click fraud, "better than recent industry estimates of click fraud levels." The company has terminated relationships with partners that "didn't meet our standards." Hello MySpace.

5:22 p.m. -- Talking about making the commercial launch of Yahoo! Publisher's Network in Q4 instead of Q3, but "you should plan for sometime in Q1" so it will be the most successful commercial launch possible. What? Not only will it be late (lots of QA etc.), but it will also be so late that you shouldn't even plan on it being done just one quarter late, but two. I don't see this as a good communications strategy -- were it me, I'd have just said it will be done in Q1. But then, Yahoo! hasn't yet called me offering me a position as Director of Communications.

5:24 p.m. -- CFO Susan Decker is taking over to rattle off numbers. Free cash flow was $358 million in the 2nd quarter 2006, compared to $300 million of the same period in 2005. She's happy with this.

5:26 p.m. -- She seems breathless, talking as fast as possible, as she details the division information. Nervous but sure of her numbers.

5:28 p.m. -- The best measure was overall pageviews, rising to an impressive 3.1 billion per day. The growth rate outpaced the "very healthy" growth rate in overall users (28%). She thinks that the users are finding ever more relevant content, and the monetization (revenue per pageview) is higher than ever. I can't get all of this, she's talking faster than I can type...

5:31 p.m. -- She's happy that Yahoo! allows clients to offer ads in both areas where "we set the price," and venues where "they do." Adjusting for unusual events last year, ad revenues grew 23% year-over-year. Expects "16 million paid relationships" by year end, with $3-4 per month average.

5:33 p.m. -- Headcount is up, squeezing margins. She says they're "pleased" that they've been able to make investments in talent, without impacting margins and profits too much. Deep breath. Take a deep breath, Susan.

5:34 p.m. -- Margins are expected to remain the same in Q3, but be better in Q4. Yay holidays! Full-year 2006 free cash flow as high as $1.8 billion, including some minor margin expansion in international divisions. The company is buying land in California, so that will impact the free cash negatively, but Decker's pleased about the opportunity to get some assets beneath company headquarters.

5:36 p.m. -- Tax rate will be as much as 100 basis points higher than expected this year (whoa), but will decrease over the next few years.

5:39 p.m. -- Question time. Always my favorite part.

5:40 p.m. -- Mark Mahaney from Citigroup wants to know if the TAC growth can be normalized to account for the loss of the MSN relationship. Susan says that she expects the 200 basis points shortfall from the first half to continue in the second half.

5:42 p.m. -- Anthony Noto from Goldman Sachs wants to know how Yahoo! is doing on a revenue basis, compared to its competitors, on search advertising, with regards to RPS. Susan thinks they've lost market share, but the product is doing so well toward consumers; so when the new publishing system ("Panama") is ready, they'll be ready to take over the world. So to speak.

5:44 p.m. -- I missed who asked the question, but it's about traffic quality, and: why did you not know during the analyst conference call that Project Panama would be delayed? Well, it was two months ago! says COO Dan Rosensweig (whose voice I trust, somehow). "As we got further along in the process, we wanted to make sure we did it right... make sure we did all the necessary testing ... over 20,000 different tests to make sure these things are right ... that advertisers get what they expect."

5:46 p.m. -- Are there bugs in the system? an analyst asks. Why is Panama so late? Dan is getting a little impatient, but trying to hide it. That was two months ago! he reminds us.

5:48 p.m. -- Piper Jaffray. Why did the active registered users not grow this quarter, for the first time ever? Is 33% growth in pageviews a proxy for overall growth? Are you losing any volume to competitors? Susan says there is no impact on revenue from registered users numbers ... and June's very soft numbers (end of school year) have an exaggerated impact on the quarter.

5:58 p.m. -- Justin Post? from Merrill Lynch wants to know if the homepage changes have affected search numbers. Dan says they have a fantastic opportunity to get more of its users into search by integrating Yahoo! toolbars and other places, and by improving products like social search, image search, and the like, as well as Yahoo! Answers, a tremendous opportunity for advertising (once, of course, the content is established). He expects both the content and the advertising will be more visual, and Yahoo! can provide a platform that no one else can provide.

Susan adds that "we think" that the company has been growing search very consistently, and that the numbers analysts can see are not the reality the way Yahoo! sees it. She says they've been seeing very steady and consistent results in search.

With that, Terry Semel is signing off!