PHP is a specialized tool. You cannot compete with that without going the distance, such as mod_perl or whatever other methods. So yeah, it is going to benchmark faster, probably.

However, in a decent-size shop, you quickly realize the importance of good code organization and such, and I think that Perl is much better at this when compared to a lot of languages out there. Enterprise-level apps are a very lucrative market, and I'd be a lot prouder to capture a thousand mid-to-high-range shops than a million tiny PHPBB websites.

Anywho, in Perl I can implement my own damn HTTP server if I like, and it will be even faster. And getting the first prototype up and running would still take about a day. That's where there is a lot of (often unnoticed) power for Perl: ability to quickly bring up pretty stable and usable solutions in a diversity of situations. Those solutions then either end up staying there, or are replaced by a dedicated tool that does the job better (and is appropriately more expensive/less versatile).