Internet firm Yahoo! Inc has reported a 28 per cent jump in net earnings to $286 million in the January-March quarter of 2012 mainly by higher search revenues.
The company had net earnings of $223 million in the year-ago period, Yahoo said in a statement.
For the three-month period ended March 31, 2012, revenues rose 1 per cent to $1.22 billion. The company’s revenue excluding traffic-acquisition costs — commissions paid to partners — increased to $1.08 billion.
“In the first quarter, Yahoo!’s results came in at the high-end of our guidance range and beat consensus on revenue and profits,” Yahoo CEO, Mr Scott Thompson, said.
“We also made changes to resize the organisation and establish a new leadership structure to quickly deliver the best user and advertiser experiences at scale,” he added.
During the quarter, Yahoo!’s core display-advertising business was down four per cent to $454 million, while search revenue surged 8 per cent from year-earlier to $384 million in the first quarter of 2012.
In comparison, rival Google’s first quarter net income spurted 61 per cent to $2.89 billion and revenue soared 24 per cent from last year to $8.14 billion.
Looking ahead, Yahoo! expects revenues revenue between $1.03 billion and $1.14 billion, excluding commissions paid to marketing partners for the second quarter. Overall, revenues for the second quarter are expected to be in a range of $1.17 billion to $1.29 billion.
Yahoo!, which has 700 million users, has been struggling to increase its share in the Internet market amid tough competition from Google and Facebook.
Earlier this month, the company announced it will lay off 2,000 employees as part of a savings plan and would save $375 million in a year for the company.
The move would represent major change under new CEO, formerly head of eBay’s PayPal unit, who took over in January, following Mr Carol Bartz’s departure in September 2011.