The im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has caused Cin­e­maONE Ltd to ex­pe­ri­ence a 284.1 per cent de­cline in net prof­it for the nine months end­ed June 30, with an af­ter tax loss of $1.84 mil­lion com­pared to a $1 mil­lion prof­it for the com­pa­ra­ble pe­ri­od in 2019.

In his Chair­man’s re­port for the com­pa­ny, Bri­an Jahra said: “The out­break of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has trig­gered un­prece­dent­ed chal­lenges in the in­ter­na­tion­al econ­o­my and Cin­e­maONE’s re­sults high­light the im­pact of the glob­al movie ex­hi­bi­tion in­dus­try shut­down which com­menced in March 2020.”

In com­pli­ance with the T&T Pub­lic Health Or­ders, Cin­e­maONE’s the­atre fa­cil­i­ties were closed for the en­tire­ty of the com­pa­ny’s third quar­ter. The man­dat­ed clo­sure ex­tend­ed for 107 days un­til Ju­ly 2.

Jahra added that “de­spite a good start to the fis­cal year”, Cin­e­maONE ex­pe­ri­enced a 58 per cent de­cline in gross rev­enue for the nine month pe­ri­od end­ed June 30, 2020 as a di­rect con­se­quence of COVID-19 clo­sure re­quire­ments.

He said: “It should al­so be not­ed that Q3 (Quar­ter 3) has his­tor­i­cal­ly been the com­pa­ny’s strongest quar­ter due to the tra­di­tion­al­ly sea­son­al re­leas­es of ma­jor Hol­ly­wood block­buster films.”

How­ev­er, Jahra not­ed that in Q3 of 2020 ma­jor Hol­ly­wood re­leas­es such as Warn­er Broth­er’s Won­der Woman and Tenet, Dis­ney’s Black Wid­ow and Mu­lan as well as MGM/Uni­ver­sal’s No Time to Die have all been de­layed to the­atri­cal re­lease dates be­tween late Au­gust – No­vem­ber 2020.

Ac­cord­ing to Jahra, Cin­e­maONE has swift­ly re­spond­ed to the COVID-19 in­duced fi­nan­cial chal­lenges. He said that the com­pa­ny im­ple­ment­ed tem­po­rary per­son­nel and salary re­duc­tions and ne­go­ti­at­ed mod­i­fied tim­ing and/or abate­ment of con­trac­tu­al pay­ments with land­lords, key fi­nan­cial part­ners and oth­er ma­jor sup­pli­ers.

As a re­sult, Jahra high­light­ed that the com­pa­ny cur­tailed its Year To Date (YTD) Q3 Op­er­at­ing Loss to ($0.66M) and Net Loss to ($1.85M) for the nine month pe­ri­od.

In an ef­fort to pre­serve liq­uid­i­ty, Jahra al­so not­ed that the com­pa­ny adopt­ed a phased ap­proach to cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­tures re­lat­ed to on­go­ing the­atre ex­pan­sion projects in Gulf City Mall, which were al­so sus­pend­ed for a two month pe­ri­od at the peak of the coun­try’s COVID-19 lock­down.

Jahra added: “Dur­ing Q3 Cin­emONE has worked close­ly with Gov­ern­ment both in the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of salary and oth­er re­lief pro­grams for Cin­e­maONE’s em­ploy­ees and in the col­lab­o­ra­tive for­mu­la­tion of pub­lic health guide­lines for the lo­cal movie ex­hi­bi­tion in­dus­try’s re-open­ing.”

Al­though Jahra not­ed that the com­pa­ny has been en­cour­aged by the cin­e­ma’s re­open­ing at­ten­dance, the re­cent COVID-19 spike in T&T has caused Prime Min­is­ter (PM) Dr Kei­th Row­ley to make a de­ci­sion to close cin­e­ma’s for the next 27 days.

This means a fur­ther de­lay in the com­pa­ny’s pro­ject­ed “stag­gered, re­turn to nor­mal­cy”.

Be­fore the an­nounce­ment of a scal­ing back on cer­tain busi­ness­es was made by the PM on Sat­ur­day 15 Au­gust, 2020, Jahra not­ed that Cin­e­maONE’s di­rec­tors re­mained con­fi­dent that the com­pa­ny’s cur­rent fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and its prag­mat­ic ap­proach to op­er­a­tions and cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­tures will en­able it to be po­si­tioned for pent-up de­mand - which the cin­e­ma be­lieves will resur­face as new block­buster sup­ply con­straints ease.