Yahoo just posted its first-quarter results. Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs was down 6% from the year-ago period at $1,064 million. This is primarily due to the revenue share related to Yahoo-Microsoft deal, the company says.

Year-over-year revenue was otherwise flat.

“We are solidly executing toward our plan for returning Yahoo! to sustainable revenue and profit growth, said CEO Carol Bartz. “During the quarter, we beat the midpoint of revenue guidance while continuing to deliver on the bottom line. We continued to extend our lead as the world’s premier digital media company with users to Yahoo! branded properties increasing 15% year over year and minutes spend increasing 17%.”

Yahoo’s Associated Content took a major hits in search visibility from Google’s Panda update, so that can’t help things too much.

More from the announcement:

GAAP revenue was $1,214 million for the first quarter of 2011, a 24 percent decrease from the first quarter of 2010, primarily due to the required change in revenue presentation related to the Search Agreement and the associated revenue share with Microsoft. For transitioned markets (U.S. and Canada), Yahoo! now reports revenue associated with the Search Agreement on a net (after TAC) basis rather than a gross basis. Excluding the impact of these two items and the impact of the divestitures of Zimbra and HotJobs, broadband deferred revenue amortization, and certain fee rate reductions, revenue for the first quarter of 2011 decreased 8 percent compared to the first quarter of 2010.

Net earnings per diluted share were $0.17 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2011, compared to $0.22 in the first quarter of 2010, a decrease of 23 percent. Net earnings per diluted share in the first quarter of 2011 included an impairment charge of $0.02 related to an investment held by Yahoo Japan. Net earnings per diluted share in the first quarter of 2010 included benefits of $0.05 related to the sale of Zimbra and $0.02 related to transition cost reimbursements from Microsoft attributable to 2009, reimbursed in 2010. Excluding these items, net earnings per diluted share for the first quarter of 2011 increased 23 percent compared to the first quarter of 2010.

Yahoo stock on the NASDAQ at the time of this writing is currently down to 16.12 per share.

The company did manage to beat estimates.