Signaling an improved business climate and a stabilizing pricing environment, systems integration and consulting services provider Infosys Technologies Ltd. today said its revenue and earnings declined only slightly in the three-month period ended Sept. 30.

The company reported second-quarter revenue of $1.2 billion, down 5.1% compared with the same period a year ago. Infosys’ net earnings, meanwhile, fell less than 1% to $317 million.

Despite the slippage, company officials said they are seeing market improvements, with some customers resuming spending on IT projects. Infosys officials, however, stopped short of declaring that a sustainable recovery is under way.

“We are seeing some stability in the environment, but it doesn’t mean clients are opening up their purses,” said Infosys CEO S. Gapalakrishnan in statements to financial analysts. “They are very cautious about the environment. They are very tentative. They are not very clear about how the environment is going to move next year.”

As a result of that caution, Infosys issued financial projections for the rest of 2009 suggesting continued revenue and earnings declines. For its full fiscal year ending March 31, 2010, Infosys said it expects revenue to be between $4.6 billion and $4.62 billion, which would represent a drop of 1% to 1.3%. Earnings per share, the company said, are expected to decline 6.7% to 7.1%.

For the second quarter, revenue and profit from Infosys’ manufacturing-related customers generally tracked the company’s overall results. Manufacturing-related revenue was $453 million in the second quarter, down 0.9% from the year-earlier results. Manufacturing-related gross profit fell 2.2% to $134 million.

The manufacturing market, Infosys’ second-largest vertical, outperformed the company’s largest market, financial services, which saw revenue fall 5.7% to $757 million.

During the quarter, Infosys said it signed 135 new clients, three of them Fortune 500 companies, which brings the total of Fortune 500 clients to 112.

In some markets, Infosys officials said, the stabilization the company observed was due, in part, to mergers and consolidation as clients attempted to position themselves for post-recession growth.

Infosys said first-half revenue from North America grew 1.1% to $1.47 billion, while revenue from its European operations in the first six months of the fiscal year fell 17.2% to $545 million.