Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Yahoo! Inc., owner of the second most popular U.S. search engine, surged 7.9 percent in Nasdaq trading after fourth-quarter earnings beat analysts’ estimates, buoyed by job cuts and rising domestic sales.

Excluding items such as stock-based compensation, earnings were about 18 cents a share, beating the 17 cents estimated by analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Excluding fees passed on to partner sites, sales were $1.38 billion, meeting projections.

Carol Bartz, in her first earnings conference call as chief executive officer, said she would consider offers to buy the company’s assets, while adding that she didn’t come to Yahoo with the intention of selling it. She took over this month from Jerry Yang, who stepped down after Yahoo’s rejection of a $47.5 billion offer from Microsoft Corp. rankled investors last year.

“Did I come to Yahoo to sell the company? The answer is no,” Bartz, 60, said on the call. “This is not a company that needs to be pulled apart and left for the chickens.”

Including costs to fire workers and a writedown in the international unit, Yahoo posted a loss of $303.4 million, or 22 cents a share. Total sales fell 1.4 percent to $1.81 billion, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said yesterday.

Yahoo rose 90 cents to $12.24 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares declined 48 percent last year.

Sales Forecast

For the first quarter, Yahoo forecast sales of $1.53 billion to $1.73 billion. That compares with the $1.71 billion estimate of Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York. Yahoo didn’t provide an annual forecast, a departure from previous earnings announcements.

“Q1 was very cautious, very conservative,” said Todd Greenwald, a Baltimore-based analyst at Signal Hill Capital Group LLC. He has a hold rating on the stock. “They’re looking at a Q1 that is pretty bad.”

Fourth-quarter sales increased 2 percent to $1.34 billion in the U.S., Yahoo said. International sales declined 10 percent to $468 million.

Yahoo depends more heavily on display ads than search advertising, where Google leads, Lindsay said. Google handled 63.5 percent of U.S. searches in December, while Yahoo had 20.5 percent, according to ComScore Inc. of Reston, Virginia.

The display market should grow about 5 percent this year, compared with 10 percent growth for search ads, according to Susquehanna International Group. Last year, search ads grew 25 percent, while the display market climbed 18 percent.

Search, Display

Yahoo’s worldwide revenue from search ads climbed 11 percent last quarter as users submitted more queries, Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said on the call. Sales of display advertising declined 2 percent, he said.

With the recession deepening, Yahoo is slashing costs. The company announced plans in October to cut at least 10 percent of its workforce. Just days after Bartz took over this month, the company said it would freeze pay for many employees.

The company reported $137 million in severance and reorganization costs last quarter, and recorded a $488 million cost for goodwill impairment in its international business.

Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for as much as $33 a share last year. After dropping that bid, Microsoft made an unsuccessful run for Yahoo’s search business alone.

Within days of Bartz’s appointment, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock met in New York, a person familiar with the matter said this month.

Bartz said yesterday that she wouldn’t comment on reports of the meeting or who might be leading the discussions.

“It’s my job to make sure that if there’s something interesting to look at, we look at it,” Bartz said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at Bwomack1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 28, 2009 16:34 EST