Staff at Yahoo Australia & NZ have been sheltered from a series of worldwide sackings as the portal attempts to cut its costs.

Yahoo intends to axe around 400 staff or 12 percent of its 3,510 global workforce.

However, Yahoo Australia & NZ spokesperson Anna Featherstone says there will be no local job implications.

"This is a really positive sign for the Australian business. The Australian business is growing strongly," she said.

Yahoo's net pro forma income came in at US$7.6 million - or 1 cent per share - for the quarter, on sales of US$180.2 million. That's substantially down from the same period last year, when the portal giant reported net income of 10 cents a share on sales of US$230 million.

The net loss was US$11.5 million compared with net income of US$67.6 million for the same period last year.

In March there were 3.6 million Australia and NZ unique users to the Yahoo network who collectively generated over 480 million page views.

"Key metrics, including advertisers, merchants, audience, revenue and page views continue to grow and thanks to this momentum, there are no local staff changes planned," Featherstone said.

"Although global growth is not as rocket-fuelled as it was last year, it's still powering and Yahoo Australian and NZ is a great example of that. We need all our team on board to cope with the unique opportunities in this market."

The Australian operation has set the target of achieving the number one or two market position in each category and region where it does business.

"As a result, we are allocating our resources to essential communication, commerce and media services," Featherstone said.

Yahoo did not announce a replacement for its American CEO Tim Koogle. However, it said its head of international operations, Heather Killen, would leave the company.

Gloabally, the company intends to discontinue some "secondary services," decreasing marketing and promotion costs, outsourcing some of its operations, and centralising parts of its businesses around the world.

In a blow, the total number of advertisers on the US site fell to 3,185 from some 3,700 in the previous quarter.

"Their lack of visibility remains," said Jordan Rohan, an equity analyst, referring to the few clues about Yahoo's future performance.

CNET's Jim Hu contributed to this report.

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