SAN FRANCISCO: Buoyed by its heavy international presence, Hewlett-Packard appears to have sidestepped the softening demand from corporations inside the United States for new technology.

In recent weeks, companies including Cisco, International Business Machines and Network Appliances have warned that U.S. corporations are tightening their technology spending. But on Monday, Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest technology company, not only reported strong fourth quarter net profit and sales but also predicted further growth in the months ahead.

During conference calls with reporters and industry analysts, Mark Hurd, the chief executive, declined to answer directly whether HP was seeing a softening in demand among corporate customers in the United States. Over all, he said, “we're seeing fairly steady demand.”

He also said, “I don't want to be confused with an economist in any way, shape or form.”

Hewlett-Packard, he also noted, did not depend on the financial industry for a significant portion of its sales.

Wall Street analysts said the results, which beat their projections, reflected the diversity of HP's business geographically and its reliance on selling to consumers, not just corporations. “This is very different from what we heard from IBM and Cisco, in particular,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research. “HP continues to execute in this very tough environment. The key reason is that they're very global.”

Hurd, known for giving conservative forecasts to analysts, predicted that revenue for 2008 would rise about 7 percent to about $111.5 billion. The new forecast exceeded industry analysts' predictions.

For HP's fourth quarter, which ended Oct. 31, the company reported revenue of $28.3 billion and net income of $2.8 billion, or 86 cents a share, a figure that did not include one-time charges.

In the fourth quarter a year ago, HP reported net income of $1.9 billion, or 68 cents a share, and revenue of $24.55 billion. For its full fiscal 2007, HP reported revenue of $104.3 billion and net income of $8 billion, or $2.93 a share, excluding one-time charges.

A. M. Sacconaghi, an industry analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, called the fourth-quarter and fiscal 2007 earnings “very solid.”

The company's shares, which fell with the overall market Monday during regular trading, was down 12 cents to $49.32 in early afternoon trading Tuesday. The company also announced a plan to buy back $8 billion of its shares.