NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - A bullish sales outlook from bellwether Cisco Systems may help chase away tech earnings fears Wednesday.

U.S. stock futures were up, indicating a higher open for U.S. markets, especially the tech-heavy Nasdaq.

Computer network equipment maker Cisco (Research) reported slightly better than forecasted earnings for its fiscal second quarter, and gave a strong outlook on orders and revenue. Shares of Cisco gained nearly 5 percent in heavy European trading early Wednesday.

Techs have been battered in recent days after earnings that missed forecasts at Google (Research) and Amazon.com (Research), coupled with published reports that questioned the growth potential for Cisco.

Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co., said he was not convinced that the growth concerns should be put to rest for Cisco, but he said that he also thinks the market was oversold all types of assets in trading Tuesday.

"It's certainly better outlook than yesterday," Hogan said about the higher futures. "Everything that hit the ticker yesterday was negative, so any ray of sunshine helps."

Dow component Pfizer (Research) saw its shares rise more than 1 percent in after-hours trading after the No. 1 drugmaker said it was looking at a possible sale of its consumer products division, which produces products such as Listerine, Rolaids and Purell. The division had revenue of $3.9 billion in 2005 and the Wall Street Journal reports that it could fetch between $8 billion to $11 billion based on recent sales multiples.

Oil prices were slightly higher ahead of the 10:30 a.m. ET report on U.S. fuel inventories. The March light crude futures contract for NYMEX gained 7 cents to $63.16 a barrel in electronic trading, while the March contract for Brent crude rose 15 cents to $61.71.

Major markets in Asia closed mostly lower Wednesday, and major European markets were also off in early trading.

Treasury prices were little changed, leaving the yield on the benchmark 10-year note near the 4.56 percent late Tuesday. The dollar was slightly higher against both the euro and the yen.

In other corporate news, McDonald's (Research) stock was down 1 percent in Europe after the Financial Times reported that the fast food chain's french fries have one third more trans fat than it had previously reported. Trans fats have been linked to heart attacks and McDonald's has been under fire from public interest health groups over the trans fat content of its fries in the past.

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