LIVE BLOGGING: Time Warner earnings conference call

On the capital structure, it has an average buyback price of $18.44 for its $20 billion buyback plan and the new plan of $5 billion is a very attractive use of capital after its recently hiked dividend . . . (10:39 AM EST)

Shares are now down over 4% after the company backed off of some of its prior AOL growth expectations. Wayne Pace, CFO of Time Warner Inc., is now going back over the results that have already been released. Here are some additional comments on the units:

Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) is engaged in negotiations with privately held Insight Communications, a cable operator. AOL has now passed the one-year anniversary of its revised Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) deal. It expects ad revenues at AOL to expand at a lower rate than earlier in 2007, which again is a first notation of that sort. Subscriber revenues are down 55% as it tries to convert dial-up access accounts to free ad-based users.

Cable subscriber highlights showed 13,391,000 subscribers (basic) with 7.732 million digital subscribers, 7.188 million high-speed residential users, and 2.2335 million digital phone subscribers . . . (11:01 AM EST)

Networks saw a 1% decline to $2.601 billion . . . and publishing revenues posted a small gain to $1.253 billion . . . (11:04 AM EST)

QUESTION & ANSWER
Sanford Bernstein . . . Was there a slowdown in search? Well, no . . . but a traffic pattern pattern changed as users adjusted and grew used to the new query features. But that has started to change and query's and page views will grow on a year/year basis. They did grow sequentially already for the first time. Last year saw a page view drop because of paid subscribers being done away with. We see page views rising sequentially, plus email and customer engaging activities are rising.....We have a steadily increasing user base. (11:08 AM EST)

FOLLOW ON: THEN WHY CHANGE GUIDANCE? . . . we aren't sure it will be exactly lower, but it is conservative. The company doesn't want to constrain itself too much compared to prior guesses when the company was changing so much.... DICK PARSONS stepped in here... we are managing according to business imperatives rather than according to only guidance. We're trying to get strategy embedded over long-term......that creates short term turbulence and that is why they are stepping back. He even noted to relieve internal expectations....

SPENCER WONG......Q&A...over 12-18 months, what about ownership percentages of Time Warner Cable and AOL Units....Parsons said they are asked and don't have much to add yet.....we like the cable business.... and as far as AOL we remain confident and AOL is reassuring itself as a leader in online ad space..... we are engaged in proving the portfolio in magazine brands and moving some of the brands onto online space over next 12-18 months

ANTHONY NOTO, GOLDMAN SACHS: . . . On AOL 2 questions: 1) pricing pressure isn't in control, how much more CPM pressure? 2) Would you ever consider consolidating a larger portal in the space?
As we improve third party platform will be increased for optimization and will see an increase in ad efficiency and increase the dollar price or yield in those categories. Email is now 43% page views, up from 41% last quarter and that is becoming able to be monetized where it had not been before......that will rise, so we see monetization as steadily improving... AS FAR AS ANOTHER PORTAL....we get asked and should be asked because the company asks itself the same....BUT no answer really there (11:18 AM EST)

THOMAS WEISEL PARTNERS...on Filmed Entertainment & Warner .........the company monetized some off-network syndications, will see in 2008 we don't want to specify...QUESTION ON VOD TRIALS..... basically what we've got is the buy rates on video on demand are up roughly 50% and the sell-through did not go down and actually went up; Comcast shares part also went up in their report. The physical DVD markets were showing up as used inventories in stores and the tests are auspicious and the whole industry should move to and adopt VOD for increased margins at the studios with 3-times the margin versus physical DVD rentals

Jessica Reif COHEN (MERRILL LYNCH) on Cable.....cable is leading in pricing and dollar volume. Court TV is up the most, Adult Swim seeing similar gains, but Kids upfront via cartoons is the one that isn't showing increases
What about political ads? Even 15 months out they are seeing some buoyancy to ad spending environment including CNN (not broken out separately). On the THIRD QUARTER....it is flattish as planned at Turner and at HBO.....ON AOL IS THERE ROOM FOR AOL COST CUTS?????....we are on track to cut $1 Billion by end of 2007, down to 1/5th of a year ago.... (11:27)

CITIGROUP Jason.... question on DVD trends moderating or will there be another leg down? Biggest titles for the year are just starting to come out and you may see very strong Q4 in home video.

Emon Kahn at JPMORGAN...On Mapquest versus other competing driving traffic? Well, as far as mapquest, traffic has trended up and still has leading share.....has upgraded last several months and will continue to do so....wants better circulation of traffic and better movement for users.....Traffic market share has remained consistent. (11:30 AM EST)

OPPENHEIMER...Tom Egan... question ON DEMAND, what about pullback in retail DVD and on on-demand advertising? That VOD has hurt retail DVD a bit...but they can have time specific ads.

LAST QUESTION......MORGAN STANLEY... on cable networks, what about domestic ad growth and changes to commercial loading????? going forward is that the general ad revenue will postgains....that question was hard to understand.

END OF CONF CALL
11:33 AM EST

TWX SHARES went out at $18.64 on over 20 million share volume at the end of the conference call.

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.