• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, January 25, 2011

Yahoo Tuesday reported slightly better than expected fourth-quarter results, posting earnings per share of 24 cents, on net revenue of $1.2 billion. Wall street analysts had forecast net revenue of $1.19 and profit of 22 cents a share. Gross revenue of $1.5 was in line with analyst estimates.

The embattled Web portal said display ad revenue was up 17% from a year ago on continued strong marketer spending. On the search side, Yahoo highlighted completing the transition of North American paid search to Microsoft on schedule during the quarter.

"We just completed a very encouraging quarter and year for Yahoo!, where we saw our plans to turn around the company gain momentum," said Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, in a statement. The company's revenue outlook of of $1.02 billion to $1.08 billion for the current quarter, however, fell below analysts' expectation of $1.13 billion.

Earlier in the day, Yahoo confirmed the layoffs of about 14o employees in its latest round of job cuts. In December, the company let go about 600 workers, or 4% of its global staff, to reduce costs and help revitalize its business. The earlier layoffs fell most heavily on the company's U.S. product group. Read more here.