Technology giant Cisco Systems has reported a surge in profits, sending its stock price sharply higher.

The company said on Tuesday that profits after one-off costs for the three months to late April came in at $729m (�437m), up from a loss of $2.7bn during the same period last year.

The figures, which were slightly ahead of analysts' forecasts, pushed Cisco stock 72 cents higher to $13.80 in after-hours trade in New York.

Cisco chief executive John Chambers said the company's strong bottom line showed that it was well placed to cash in on the US economic upturn.

"Cisco is well positioned when the economy rebounds. Last year was a classic downturn," he said in a statement.

Sales flat

The performance of Cisco, the world's biggest producer of the networking hardware that underpins the internet, is often seen as a litmus test for the wider technology sector.

But in a sign that the long-awaited tech sector upturn may still be some way off, Cisco's sales were only fractionally higher compared with the previous three-month period at $4.82bn.

The modest increase was in line with the company's own cautious forecast of "flat to low single-digit" sales growth.

Analysts said the Cisco's higher profits reflected an earlier round of cost-cutting.

Waiting for the upturn

Cisco was one of the biggest stars of the late 1990s technology boom, when companies poured money into networking systems in order to meet an anticipated surge in e-commerce.

An upturn in the company's sales could be interpreted as a sign that corporate investment in networking hardware was picking up again after more than a year in the doldrums.

Cisco has been hit hard by the tech sector downturn, with its share price losing about two thirds of its value since the beginning of last year.

But the company's relatively low exposure to the ailing telecommunications sector means that it has fared better than some of its rivals.