Newcastle-based software giant Sage Group, the UK’s largest tech company, said its revenue rose 22.7% to £840 million and profit before tax jumped 41.1% to £180 million in the six months ended March 31, 2017.

Shares in Sage rose about 3% to 705p to give it a stock market value of more than £7.5 billion.

Sage CEO Stephen Kelly said in a statement: “These are positive results in line with market expectations and there are clear signs our strategy is working, with seven of our nine largest geographies that collectively generate 95% of our revenues now delivering growth in excess of our revenue guidance.

“The investments in our go-to-market functions are starting to bear fruit: our cloud-enabled products are growing strongly and we have made progress in our new customer acquisition strategy, driving momentum in Q2 that will continue throughout H2 and as we exit FY17.

“Our updated payments and banking strategy and the acquisition of Fairsail, show our commitment to the golden triangle of accounting, people & payroll and payments & banking, reinforced by our cloud capabilities.

“We are focused on Sage continuing to invest in growth, predominantly through new customer acquisition with cloud-products, and supported by bolt-on acquisitions that accelerate the strategy.”

Sage gave an update on a review of its payments and banking business.

“Today we reconfirm our commitment as a key participant in the global payments and banking services ecosystem, increasing our focus on deeply embedding payments and banking services within our accounting, payroll and people products, to help customers move and manage their money in many more geographies than we do today … ” said Sage.

“We can therefore confirm that our North American payments business is now held for sale but we plan to retain the payments businesses in UK & Ireland and South Africa.”