Investors and others trying to figure out where Microsoft's Yahoo bid is headed will be closely analyzing comments made on the subject by Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer, during the company's earnings conference call this afternoon. Here's the full text:

With or without a Yahoo combination, Microsoft is focused on the online advertising market, which is expected to double by 2010, to $80 billion. Although Yahoo would accelerate our efforts, we have an existing strategy that is already centered on three key pillars: Drive innovation in search, increase value to advertisers and publishers through innovation and scale, and grow user engagement across our MSN and Windows Live properties. We have an extremely talented engineering team, a great portfolio of advertiser and publisher tools, and key assets in information content, communications and social networking. Lastly, we're committed to compete in online advertising through organic investments, partnerships and acquisitions, such as aQuantive and Rapt.

With respect to Yahoo, we've been clear, as is evident from the size of our offer premium, that speed is of the essence for the deal to make sense and get folded into our online strategy. Unfortunately, the transaction has been anything but speedy and has been characterized by what would appear to be unrealistic expectations of value. Our initial offer was extremely generous, more than a 100 percent premium for Yahoo's core business, and our view on value is shaped by the long-term value of the company, and we intend to remain disciplined in our approach.

The strongest argument that I've heard on why we should increase our bid -- simply that we can afford to -- is not one that I favor.

We've yet to see tangible evidence that our bid substantially undervalues the company. In fact, we see the opposite. Yahoo continues to lose search share, and profitablity continues to decline year-on-year. The results that they announced on Tuesday were in line with the guidance that they gave on their last earnings call, on Jan. 29, after which their stock price closed at $19.05, and Wall Street analysts' consensus on value was significantly decreased.

As outlined in our recent letter to the Yahoo board, unless we make progress with Yahoo towards an agreement by this weekend, we will reconsider our alternatives. We will provide updates as appropriate next week. These alternatives clearly include taking an offer to Yahoo shareholders or to withdraw our proposal and focus on other opportunites, both organic and inorganic.