Wednesday, Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard announced that it had decreased its revenue forecast for the year, predicting that the company’s profits would register an approximate decline of as much as 5 percent from last year’s $118.4 billion.

Back in November, HP informed that it expected that sales for 2009 would bring earnings of $130 billion, which dazzled investors and led everyone to believe that the company was recession-proof.

Shebly Seyrafi, an analyst with Calyon Securities, said that the recent forecasts went to prove that HP had registered plummeting sales within the previous two months.

The announcement accounted for the first time that HP reduced its full-year revenue predictions since Mark V. Hurd was named Chief Executing Officer (CEO) back in April 2005.

Speaking of HP’s news, A. M. Sacconaghi, a securities analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said that people would come to be concerned because the company showed it was vulnerable to the global economic crisis, adding that before the current quarter, everybody had thought HP infallible and able to meet their forecasts.

In the first fiscal quarter of this year, HP’s revenue dropped by almost 20 percent from last year, a decrease that was registered in the company’s major businesses, personal computers, business hardware and printing. Consequently, HP has joined other giants that registered such declines, including Intel and Cisco Systems, which have come into low demand from customers.

Hewlett-Packard posted a 13 percent decrease in revenue to $1.85 billion, which translates as 75 cents a share, down from $2.13 billion (80 cents a share) within the same time-frame last year.