It also includes a decision to sell the problematic North American payments business. For the half just ended, underlying revenue was $1.18 billion, up 5.8 percent from the year ago half. Profit grew 37.8 percent to approximately $188.7 million. In a prepared statement, CEO Stephen Kelly said the company was making progress in adding new customers. Sage said the primary reason or lower North American growth is that prior increases relied on upselling customers on support plans and that cow has been milked about as much as possible Underlying North American revenue was about $404 million, a 3-percent rise from last year’s corresponding period. Also organic revenue growing for the continent for the half was 4percent (excluding payments) compared to a 7 percent in last year’s corresponding period. Recurring revenue growth of 7 percent also trailed the company. Slowing payroll growth held the increase of processing revenue to 4 percent with Sage saying it will hire more sales people