Beating Wall Street expectations in terms of both profits and sales, Microsoft said on Thursday that its fiscal first-quarter profit edged up 2 percent, sustained through economic uncertainty by growth in the client, business and server and tools divisions.

Thanks to corporate customers that renewed licenses for servers and other business programs, Microsoft’s earnings rose to $4.37 billion, or 48 cents per share, from $4.29 billion, or 45 cents per share during the same period last year.

Sales too showed an improved 9 percent to $15.1 billion. In fact, Microsoft said its annuity sales, which are built mostly on multi-year software maintenance contracts, grew by more than 20%.

A Thomson Reuters survey indicates that analysts, on an average, had predicted that the Redmond, Washington-based company would earn 47 cents per share on $14.8 billion in sales.

Microsoft’s success came mostly before the economic downturn that has had financial markets in a panic recently. However, the company did go through its share of turmoil - it dropped its bid to acquire Yahoo while pursuing Google in the search and advertising market.

Microsoft Chief Financial Officer, Chris Liddell, said in an interview: “We, like most companies, saw a slowdown at the tail end of the quarter in particular. We’re now taking a more conservative stance on the balance of the year.”

Adding a high note, Liddell said Microsoft still foresees an “increase in demand for our products that will grow revenue from single digits to low double digits this financial year.”