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BY EVAN THOMAS AND JIM FLINK

ANCHOR  JIM FLINK


They’re screaming — “Yahoo!” — over at Yahoo! this morning.  Or at least, offering up a little — “yea...”.
The internet company beat the Street with its first quarter earnings under new CEO Scott Thompson.

Here are the numbers.
Yahoo reported a total revenue of $1.22 billion.
That’s up 1 percent from Q1 2011.
And it had net earnings of $286 million — up 28 percent year-over-year.

Not too many people were expecting a spectacular performance from Yahoo, given its recent administrative reorganizations and job cuts.
But Yahoo cleared the bar, and ZDNet says, that bar was set pretty low.

“That’s just a 1 percent increase over the first quarter of 2011. Still, that qualified as a “beat the Street” performance as analysts had projected flat earnings.“

So not necessarily great expectations.
But with Thompson just now getting his footing, Darren Chervitz tells CNBC , it’s probably safer to expect Yahoo to go slow and steady for the moment.

“I happen to think that stabilization is probably the best thing you can assume for Yahoo in the near term …whatever they can do, again, to stabilize and perhaps even grow the core business only means good things for the valuation of the company.”

Most analysts agree — stability comes before potential growth.
Now, all eyes turn to the CEO and what his plans are going forward.
And the Wall Street Journal notes, he’s definitely talking the talk.

“…Scott Thompson, the new CEO who took over in January, he’s talking a big talk. He’s saying ‘we are, right now, at one percent revenue growth. We want to get to more than 20 percent revenue growth.’”

So how does Yahoo! go from foundering — to robust?
TechCrunch notes, Thompson outlined a strategy of — focus.

“He said he will be shutting down or “transitioning” at least 50 Yahoo properties, so that it can focus on core products like Mail, Finance, and Sports... and accelerating the process of developing new features and products.”

While some hail Q1 as a small victory, other analysts believe the pressure now mounts on Yahoo!.
Among them, an analyst for Bloomberg .

“The year over year growth is really not there...””
There are a lot of impatient investors who’ve been waiting for stock to get back up to the levels Microsoft offered to buy the company at a couple of years ago.”

Microsoft offered $31 a share for Yahoo! in February 2008.  Since then, the stock has dropped by more than half, to about 15 dollars per share.