It's a close call as to whether the company's streak of annual revenue growth, which extends to the company's founding in 1976, will remain intact this year.

Revenue is roughly flat compared with 2008, CEO Jim Goodnight said Tuesday. Last year, the Cary company generated $2.26 billion in sales, up about 5 percent from 2007.

Speaking in front of a projected image of a graph showing SAS's ever-rising revenue, Goodnight said: "It is going to be real close as to whether we get to add another bar." Companies use SAS business intelligence and analytics software to analyze their work and predict trends.

Goodnight made his comments Tuesday during the SAS annual Media Day, which attracted about 20 journalists from around the world to the campus in Cary.

Later in the day, Jim Davis, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said in an interview that he is optimistic that fourth-quarter revenue will allow SAS to keep its streak intact.

In the first and second quarters, Davis said, the ailing economy had paralyzed corporate executives when it came to investing in new software. "I think the paralysis has ended," he said.

The weak dollar also is a plus for SAS, which generates 65 percent of its sales from the foreign market.

"As an exporter, we want a weak dollar," Goodnight said. "If the dollar stays weak ... we might eke out a little growth."

Goodnight said SAS remains profitable, although profits probably will decline slightly compared with 2008. SAS, which is privately owned, doesn't disclose profit numbers.

One of the factors affecting profitability, Goodnight said, is the pledge he made at the outset of the year to forgo layoffs. "It's acceptable to me to take a slight reduction in profits so that we can maintain our people," Goodnight said. SAS has about 12,000 employees worldwide, including about 4,200 in Cary.

Nor has the company imposed a hiring freeze. "We are still hiring, but we are hiring in select areas" that are growing, Davis said.

SAS gets a big chunk of its revenue -- 42 percent last year -- from the financial-services industry, which has taken a big hit from the recession. "They're not spending a lot of money," Goodnight said.

SAS still expects to invest 20 percent or more of its revenue in research and development this year. "We are in a constant mode of improving our software," Goodnight said. "That has been one of the secrets of our success."