A NORTH-EAST technology company is continuing to grow and will be employing more people despite revealing a half-year loss.

Sage Group, an IT software company based in Newcastle, announced a deficit of £7m in its halfyear report yesterday, which was caused by selling parts of the business for less than it paid.

But discounting this oneoff expense, it made a pretax profit of £184.9m, representing “organic” growth of three per cent. It is still on target to grow by six per cent by 2016 and plans to launch its software in France, Germany and Spain.

This success will mean more jobs at its headquarters.

The firm declined to reveal how many more staff it would be recruiting.

Guy Berruyer, chief executive, said: “We are continuing to grow our presence in the North-East.

“Newcastle is clearly the centre of our business in the UK so we are recruiting right now and continue to recruit.

“We are not about to embark into a huge expansion but it is progressive growth in developing our stage one software product. In part, we are recruiting new talent and, in part, we are training our existing developers.”

The company is returning £200m in special dividends to shareholders, he added.

Sage Group was founded in 1981 and allegedly named after a herb poster the founders saw in a local pub.

It now employs 13,000 people worldwide, including 1,300 in Newcastle, and has an annual turnover of £1.4bn.

Its software is used by 6.3 million companies and helps pay one in three UK workers. It is one of only two technology companies left in the FTSE 100.