Member Article

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

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

Published this weekend, the 16th annual Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 league table showcases three firms from the region, all based in Tyne and Wear.

ImpulsePay

Newcastle-based ImpulsePay, a mobile technology business, ranks at number 12 in the list, after undergoing a might 148% sales increase over the last three years.

Employing 8 staff, the firm counts Virgin Trains amongst its clientele and generated £12.4m during the tracked three year period. The train company Virgin Trains uses ImpulsePay’s technology to charge customers for wi-fi access.

Performance Horizon

Nearly one third (31) of the companies on the league table were founded by serial entrepreneurs, who have started at least one other business, as typified by Newcastle-based Performance Horizon.

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.

The marketing software developer appears at number 37 in the list having achieved 90% sales growth over the last three years, generating £6.2m.

Employing 81 staff, the firm says it connects 160,000 online marketers and affiliates in 183 countries.

Salecycle

The final North East entrant to appear on the list is marketing technology developer Salecycle, which employs 114 people in Houghton le Spring.

Achieving total sales of £9m for the period, the business enjoyed 89% annual sales growth over the three years helping the likes of IKEA, Dyson and Virgin Atlantic convert web visitors into customers.

The National Picture

This year’s Tech Track 100 companies achieved, on average, sales growth of 88% a year over three years to a combined total of £2.2bn. They employ 11,000 staff, having added 8,200 employees to their combined workforce over the period.

The dominant region for company HQs is London (42), followed by the South East (20). Of the remainder, eight companies are based in the North West, seven each in Scotland and the East, six in the Midlands, five in the South West, three in the North East, one in Yorkshire and one in Wales.

The Tech Track 100 is sponsored by Hiscox, Barclays, BDO and BGF, and compiled by Fast Track, the Oxford-based research and networking events firm.

Steve Langan, CEO of Hiscox Insurance Company, commented: “The Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 never fails to impress and this year is no different.

“We are proud to be associated with it, not least as we support more than 40,000 technology companies across the UK and Ireland and see first-hand their tenacity and infectious ambition.”

He added: “Congratulations to all of the North East companies listed this year – the growth and innovation they demonstrate is highly commendable.”

The full league table is published today as an eight-page supplement with the business section of The Sunday Times, both in print and in the digital edition, and on www.fasttrack.co.uk.