• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, April 17, 2012

Yahoo Tuesday reported financial results for the first quarter ahead of Wall Street’s expectations but not yet showing a strong rebound for the struggling Web portal in 2012. Yahoo had net revenue of $1.07 billion, up slightly from a year ago, but down from $1.17 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011. Net income was 23 cents a share, up 38% from 17 cents a share in the year-earlier period, and a penny below the prior quarter.

Analysts had forecast net revenue of $1.06 billion and profit of 17 cents a share in the quarter.

Display revenue, after payments made to partners, was $454 million in the first quarter, down 4% from $471 million a year ago. Search revenue, excluding costs, was $384 million, up 8% from $357 million. The search gain bodes well for Yahoo as most analysts had expected search revenue to fall at least slightly during the quarter.

The company is projects sales in the current quarter of $1.03 billion to $1.14 billion, compared to the 1.08 billion projected by analysts.

Yahoo’s first-quarter earnings come on the heels of CEO Scott Thompson announcing a sweeping reorganization as well as the layoffs of 2,000 employees, or about 14% of the company’s workforce, earlier this month. More to come after Yahoo’s conference call.