Salesforce.com Inc.'s (CRM) fiscal fourth-quarter net income nearly doubled as the online business applications company beat sales and earnings estimates, putting to rest some recent fears about the company's growth.

Following the results, shares surged 10% to $31 in after-hours trading as investors expressed relief that the company's revenue growth hadn't significantly declined. The stock later fell back to $29.70.

In spite of the stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter performance, Salesforce.com did lower its fiscal 2010 revenue forecast range, a move it said reflected greater economic uncertainty.

The stock has lost about half its value since September amid mounting fears that the challenging tech environment would prompt IT customers to curb spending on Salesforce.com's business tools. Rumors had also surfaced recently that the departure of several key executives suggested sales were deteriorating faster than expected.

Earlier this month, the departures of President and Chief Strategy Officer Steve Cakebread and two sales-related executives raised concerns about the company's performance.

For the period ended Jan. 31, Salesforce.com reported net income of $13.8 million, or 11 cents a share, up from $7.4 million, or 6 cents a share, a year earlier.

Revenue grew by 34% to $289.6 million amid subscription and support-revenue growth.

In November, the company projected earnings of 6 cents to 7 cents a share on revenue of about $284 million to $285 million.

Salesforce.com expects fiscal first-quarter net income of about 10 cents to 11 cents a share on revenue of $304 million to $305 million. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters on average forecast net income of 10 cents a share on revenue of $305 million.

For fiscal 2010, the company sees net income of 54 cents to 55 cents and lowered its revenue view to $1.3 billion to $1.33 billion from November's $1.35 billion to $1.36 billion.

In 2009, San Francisco, Calif.-based Salesforce.com, whose core product allows sales and marketing staff keep track of their customers online, became the first online business software company to top $1 billion in revenue, with revenue coming in at $1.08 billion, up 44% from fiscal 2008.

Analysts said the fourth-quarter figures allayed some of the recent concerns about the company's performance. Wedbush Morgan, which rates the stock at hold, said, however, that concerns remain that Salesforce.com's growth will slow as the small to medium-sized customers which comprise a large section of its user base increasingly feel the pinch from the worsening economy.

But Salesforce.com executives said they saw little evidence of changing customer behavior, with average selling prices and the terms of customer contracts largely unchanged.

Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff also pointed to a number of deal wins during the quarter which came at the expense of Oracle Corp. (ORCL), the database and enterprise software giant, and SAP AG (SAP), the German business software company.

Salesforce.com will take a more aggressive approach to cost management in its first quarter, Chief Financial Officer Graham Smith said.

Last year, Salesforce.com formed separate partnerships with Internet company Google Inc. (GOOG) and social-networking site Facebook, underlining growing competition in cloud-computing services, the growing use of the Internet to access both databases and software applications hosted by service providers.

-By John Kell and Jessica Hodgson, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5285; john.kell@dowjones.com