San Francisco  - Networking giant Cisco reported a 4.4-per- cent rise in quarterly profits Tuesday as the company recorded its first-ever quarter in which sales topped
10 billion dollars.

The Silicon Valley company, the world's largest maker of the routers and switches that run the internet, posted a fiscal fourth- quarter profit of 2 billion dollars, or 33 cents a share. That's up from 1.9 billion dollars, or 31 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter as sales rose to 10.4 billion dollars from 9.4 billion dollars a year ago.

For fiscal year 2008, the company reported net sales of 39.5 billion dollars, up 13.2 per cent from 34.9 billion dollars in sales in 2007. Profits were up 9.8 per cent to 8.1 billion dollars from 7.3 billion dollars last year.

"Cisco delivered solid quarterly and annual results as network- enabled business ... and productivity increases gain traction on a global basis," said Cisco chairman and chief executive John Chambers.

Referring to the slowing global economy, Chambers said, "The market is clearly in transition, and we will use this time as an opportunity to expand our share of customer spending and to aggressively move into market adjacencies." (dpa)