A fifth successive top six Premiership finish and a League Cup semi-final helped generate a near £100,000 profit for St Johnstone.
However, in his annual report to shareholders, Perth chairman Steve Brown, who pledged to run the club with “ambition and realism,” cautioned that the club would have instead been facing a “substantial” six-figure loss without the cash banked by the sale of winger Michael O’Halloran to Rangers in February.
O’Halloran left for Ibrox nearly a year ago a reported £500,000 move and Brown admitted the sale was a “significant contributory factor” in the £98,577 annual profit.
“Following on from the sale of Stevie May the previous year, it is satisfying that the club has been able to develop such talent to its advantage. But of course such windfalls are by no means the norm or guaranteed and I will do all I can to continue to run the club in a manner which allows us to remain financially stable,” he said.
“The success we have enjoyed in recent seasons inevitably raises the bar in terms of expectations and it is to the credit of Tommy (Wright), his staff and the players that we finished last season feeling a great deal of satisfaction.
“As I have said before, our first aim every single season is to ensure that we remain a Premiership side and we have consistently found the form in recent years to ensure that we have never seriously had to worry about that status being jeopardised.
“Our run of ‘top six’ finishes – vital in terms of revenue – continued with the players getting over the line in the final game before the split to make it five successive top half finishes. That is a superb achievement.
“We will never take our Premiership status for granted – we spent too many seasons in a lower division to do that – and that’s what makes it vital that we continue to manage the finances in the most careful manner possible whilst still giving Tommy the resources to continue all the recent good work.
“We remain very ambitious to not only continue our recent level of success but ensure that we are putting in the building blocks for the future.”
With McDiarmid Park nudging towards its 30th birthday, the Perth chairman stressed essential maintenance work was soaking up cash.
He explained: “Substantial amounts of money continues to be spent on the infrastructure of our 27-year-old stadium – a good proportion of it on ‘unseen’ and unglamorous essentials in terms of the fabric of the building – and in the summer we were able to do some more extensive renovations on the playing surface that had not been possible when we had European football commitments.”
