eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) announced second quarter results not too long ago and easily beat estimates. Sales were strong across all business segments.

Soon the webcast will begin and I'll be right here liveblogging the event with Meg Whitman and company. I want to hear what eBay has to say about the lower listings growth.

You can listen yourself to the webcast or just stay here and remember to refresh your page.

4:59 pm: Listening to violin music and waiting for the welcomes and the disclaimers that are bound to follow before we get to the real interesting stuff.

5:01 pm: OK, the webcast is officially starting late. I'll try to refresh, maybe it's me.

5:03 pm: And we're starting! Meg Whitman, Bob Swan and Bill Cobb. Disclaimers galore now. Checking eBay's stock price, down 0.9%.

5:05 pm: Meg is speaking, saying the quarter was great and giving some highlights. She sounds relaxed and calm, the best I've heard her in the past year.5:06 pm: GMV driven business: global markets are performing well. GMV growth was 2%. Certain categories, and she mentions iPhone, were growing well. A lot of time and attention is being spent on acceleration of GMV in US and Germany. eBay plans to revamp the front page -- about time!

5:08 pm: Meg is speaking about different efforts that include social networking, blogging etc. to accelerate growth. There will be a lot of changes in eBay.com, and ebay.ge.

5:09 pm: UK, France and Italy delivered strong results. Expanding into Eastern Europe. Now Asia. Telling of where eBay is growing, like Thailand. China, the partnership is going well.

5:11 pm: Now she'll talk about non-GMV stuff. Kijiji is growing and was launched in the US recently. She believes it presents a growth opportunity.

5:12 pm: Auto: launching classified in different countries and doing well in Germany.
Shopping.com - leader in the US, UK and Australia in comparison shopping.
Partnership with Yahoo! and Google is doing well.

5:13 pm: StumbleUpon acquisition was a positive step.

5:14 pm: Payments: PayPal has strong momentum, is the world's leading online payment system. Airlines added PayPal as a payment system, even Singapore Post. In Europe continues to make headways. Investing lots in PayPal.

5:15 pm: Skype (she suddenly talks very fast) had a great quarter. Partnership with Wal-Mart, Mother's Day promotion etc. Still needs more work on Skype, Meg says.

5:17 pm: She's giving a three-year overview. Customers expectations changed, she said, as did the online commerce and internet experience. eBay recognized all the changes and reacted. She's excited about the company and where it's going. Products, employees, portfolio of businesses, management and vision to social commerce. Whoa. People want to connect through commerce ... mmmm. Anyways, Meg is excited and confident.

5:20 pm: Bob is speaking now. Great financial results. Phenomenal top-line growth, strong earnings growth. Overall $1.83 billion in revenue. Strong performance in PayPal is mostly attributed to this strong growth rate. Beating guidance was driven by low US dollar and tax rate.

5:22 pm: Bob is giving an overview of marketplace performance, including GMV growth. User base grew, new listings were down 6%, core listing down 2%, store 25%. US GMV grew 10%, international 14%, or 8% exculding foreign exchange.

5:24 pm: GMV is growing faster than new listings. Revenue growing faster than GMV. He's trying to explain the 6% decline in listings growth. StubHub, for example, contribute to this phenomenon as do the partnerships in Asia where GMV isn't counted. He accounts in points the gap between GMV and listings. He expects this trend to continue. Not surprising.

5:26 pm: Giving growth rate per region. Non-GMV driven businesses contributed to top-line growth like shopping.com. These segments are still small, but continue to grow in share of revenue. Advertising continues to grows as well, as eBay capitalizes on its traffic. Increased monetization.

5:29 pm: Payments, or PayPal. 32% y-o-y growth. Global TPV grew 18% and continues to benefit from PayPal's footprint expansion worldwide.

5:30 pm: Okay, I'm trying to keep up with all the numbers, but in general it's enough to say they're good.

5:31 pm: Skype - user growth was stronger in Europe and Asia. Skype-out minutes were growing well, but activation isn't what eBay would like to see.

5:32 pm: Now, Bob explains the differences between the GAAP and Non-GAAP results. Things like acquisitions, weaker US dollar, taxes etc.

5:33 pm: More accounting stuff. Now expenses. Basically, margins improved. Now talk of cash flow and CapEx.

5:35 pm: Guidance: Raising revenue, EPS and free cashflow guidance. FY 07 Revenue $7.3-7.45 billion EPS: $1.34-1.38. Q3: revenue of $1.775 billion to $1.825 billion and EPS of $0.31 to $0.33.

5:37 pm: Questions:

5:38 pm: How early before we can see acceleration of GMV growth in US and Germany, especially Germany.
Meg: The German team has a good plan in place. Can't tell exactly when but feels confident they've diagnosed the situation and tend to it.
Bob: Conversion rates improved in Germany so on the right track. In the US, GMV accelerated from Q1 to Q2. Still lots of work to do, but we'll see.

5:40 pm: Piper Jaffray: more details on user experience:
Meg: Improve finding experience. An improved search engine algorithm. BidAssistance: Helping users bid on more than one item. New home page. Feedback 2.0. 360 degree view of the customer.

5:43 pm: Bank of America: Kijiji - what's the strategy?
Meg: Because of the success internationally, sure can succeed here. The market is very segmented. Will be pleased to have some of the success outside the US.

5:45 pm: Conversion rates. Second question about the free cash flow.
Meg: More listings are selling - that's better conversion rate. So that's encouraging.
Bob: cash flow: the focus continues to be on improving the businesses and on distributing the free cashflow to shareholders. So trying to put money back into busiensses and buying back shares. Longer-term probably will use other instruments and take advantage of low interest rates.

5:47 pm: Kijiji: What it means to the Craiglist ownership? It was a softer launch.
Meg: Don't expect the launch to affect Craiglist and expect to keep the minority ownership there. Will grow Kijiji organically.
Marketing - holiday campaign.
Bob: Innovation and activity in terms of new features to make the site more compelling and will be part of the marketing campaign later this year.

5:50 pm: More on marketing and another question on search.
Bob: Marketing and margin: Lower margins businesses are growing faster than the rest of the portfolio and plan to offset that with marketing.
Meg: Search - late in the quarter eBay ran an experiment: referring to pulling back from Google. Learnt a lot from this. Will continue to allocate between online and offline. Will be even more efficient. No impact on results on the quarter.

5:52 pm: Why are sellers slow to respond?
Meg: Big echosystem and made a big change. As it settles and sellers see the higher conversion rates. We upset the marketplace even more than we understood. Big shock to the system that only now is starting to balance. We're further along here than in Germany. Seeing some strength and too early to declare victory. Also realized have to go after user experience.

5:55 pm: PayPal - airline and travel partnerships and GMV - demand growth.
Meg: Products for airline and travel agencies like Orbitz. Have to be able to handle payment and the distribution between the airline and the portion the agency is making...
Bob: Talking about growth.

5:59 pm: Last question: Motors 2.0
Meg: Motors 2.0 has received a good feedback and is tweaking the product. Ready to launch soon. eBay would want to part cars from parts and accessories which is a segment that does really well and grows fast worldwide.


That's it, we're done.

To conclude my impression, I got the feeling of a much more confident call and management sounded more relaxed. It seems eBay's top people have a good understanding and clear goals of where they want to steer the company.

Last check on eBay's share price: down 1.3%.