Hearts owner Ann Budge delighted with Tynecastle club's progress

Hearts owner Ann Budge is pleased with the progress made by the club on and off the field during the last financial year.

Budge was speaking to shareholders at Thursday AGM at Tynecastle, when she revealed Hearts "completely outperformed" its financial plan, with turnover standing at over £7m - a figure which does not include income from the supporters group Foundation Of Hearts.

And she further delighted the fans in attendance when stating Hearts would be staying at their current home, with plans afoot to build a new stand.

"We are well ahead of our five-year plan and our future looks good," she said. "We continue doing the right things and doing them well. We currently sit in third place in the Scottish Premiership and as we have said, our target is to be in the top six this season.

"We won the Championship at the first time of asking and by a very handsome margin, the team continues to perform well and we have added some real quality players to our squad.

"Financially, we completely out-performed our financial plan and our turnover has risen from £5.09m to £7,07m - and a half million pounds improvement on the bottom line, and this does not include the donations from the Foundation of Hearts.

"Having lost £994,000 previously our losses are down to £415,000 in the past year and we are well on the way to breaking even or better this season, again, ahead of our schedule.

"In case anyone is still in doubt, the board has decided that Hearts future is here at Tynecastle. I am very confident that by this time next year we will be well down the road in terms of developing our new main stand. The first step in making this possible is, of course, to enlarge our footprint. We need more space.

"We are well on the way to securing the land that will make that possible, some land has already been purchased, the remainder is in the final stages of discussion. We will not be releasing any details until I am 100 per cent sure all hurdles have been cleared but I expect to be able to unveil our plans within a couple of months.

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"We are so proud of our new three year association with Save the Children and our introduction of the Living Wage at Tynecastle. In short we are very happy where we are and where we are going but we need our wonderful supporters to continue to support us in order to be able to achieve our targets."