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Four North East TMT firms named amongst Top 100 British companies with fastest growing sales

Four North East firms have been named in a league table ranking British private technology, media and telecoms (TMT) companies with the fastest-growing sales.

Published this weekend, the 17th annual Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 league table this year includes businesses hailing from Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Houghton le Spring.

The list, which only featured three firms from the region last year, sees two businesses return for a consecutive year.

Continue below to see which North East businesses appear on the list.

Double Eleven

Middleborough-based Double Eleven, a publisher and developer of interactive games, is the highest ranked North East business to appear, coming in the top fifty at number 42.

The company, which makes games for Sony, has a popular portfolio including the PixelJunk series, Goat Simulator and a recent edition of the BAFTA-award winning Prison Architect.

Enjoying a 92% annual sales growth over 3 years for the year ending September 2016, the firm reported £6.1m in sales.

Employing 38 staff, the company’s games have been played by over ten million people worldwide.

Performance Horizon

Newcastle based Performance Horizon, a marketing software developer, returns to the list at number 54 after featuring last year at number 37.

Co-founders Malcolm Cowley and Paul Fellows previously started online marketing business Buy.at, which featured on Tech Track 100 in 2007, before they sold it to AOL for $125m the following year.

Celebrating a 78% annual sales growth over 3 years for the year ending December 2016, the firm reported £11.9m in sales for the period.

Bede Gaming

Newcastle gambling software developer Bede Gaming joins the list, coming in at number 76.

Enjoying a 54% annual sales growth over 3 years for the year ending December 2016, the firm reported £8.2m in sales for the period.

A growing player in North East technology, the business employs 120 developers across its offices in Newcastle, London and Bulgaria.

SaleCycle

Houghton le Spring-based SaleCycle, a developer of marketing technology, has helped high-profile companies such as Virgin Atlantic increase online sales by more than 5%.

Celebrating a 46% annual sales growth over 3 years for the year ending March 2017, the firm reported £12m in sales for the period.

Now employing 154 staff in the region, the business stays in the list at number 93 despite falling from number 38 last year.

The national picture

This year’s Tech Track 100 companies achieved, on average, record sales growth of 99% a year over three years to a combined total of £2.9bn. They employ 15,300 staff, having added 12,000 employees to their combined workforce over the period.

London is the most popular location for company headquarters with 57, followed by the southeast (12). Of the remainder, eight companies are based in the northwest, six in Yorkshire and the northeast, six in the East, four in Scotland, three in the Midlands and two each in the southwest and Wales.

Steve Langan, CEO of Hiscox Insurance Company, commented: “Congratulations to all of the companies on the Sunday Times Tech Track 100.

“Their courage is laudable; rapid growth and continual innovation takes grit. We are extremely proud to be associated with such an impressive list.”

The full league table is published as a 10-page supplement with the business section of The Sunday Times on 10 September.

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