Cineworld made a record $3bn (£2.2bn) loss for last year, revealing the scale of the financial toll that months of cinema closures has brought to the world’s second largest cinema chain. The company, which on Thursday said it had raised a further $213m in funds to push it through to the beginning of a staged reopening of cinemas from next month, said revenues had decreased by more than 80% from $4.3bn pre-pandemic to $852m last year. A $3bn pre-tax loss in 2020, the first annual loss in the company’s history, compared with profits of $212m in 2019. Cineworld, which operates 663 movie theatres, said all its sites had mostly remained closed since mid-March last year. Its estate, which includes 127 UK sites making it the country’s largest operator, has been completely closed since October when the premiere of the latest James Bond film was moved back to later this year. “I never imagined a time that we would see the closure of our entire cinema estate,” said Mooky Greidinger, the chief executive of Cineworld. “Nor that varying restrictions would remain in place for so long as we continue to navigate our way through the crisis.” The company, which reported that admissions had decreased by 80% last year to just 54m, down from 275m in 2019, said it had enough financial firepower to support the reopening of its entire cinema chain estate as well as “any further closure periods”. Cineworld has securedmore than $1bn in financial lifelines, but it also said more cinema closures or Hollywood studios continuing to delay the launch of major films in theatres would “likely require the need to raise additional liquidity”. The company said that if cinema reopenings were delayed until June, or if attendance in May only reached 19% of 2019 levels, it would breach covenants with its lenders. Cineworld does not expect to recover to 2019 admission levels until 2023 and said there was “material uncertainty” over its ability to continue as a going concern. Earlier this week Cineworld said it planned to start reopening cinemas in the US from 2 April and from 17 May in the UK, in line with Boris Johnson’s plans to relax coronavirus restrictions through the summer. The company also announced a multi-year agreement with Warner Bros to show new releases exclusively for 45 days in cinemas in the US, and 31 days in the UK, from next year. Certain films will premiere in UK cinemas exclusively for 45 days if they sell an agreed number of tickets. “While we have seen changes to the theatrical release window policy in our industry during 2020, our position remains unchanged,” said Greidinger. “I believe it is clear that a window of theatrical exclusivity should remain once business gets back to normal.” Although the deal marked a positive attempt to re-establish a new middle ground with studios, which have increasingly turned to debuting films on their streaming services while cinemas remained shut, Disney has subsequently announced that major films including Marvel’s Black Widow and Cruella will debut on Disney+ at the same time as in cinemas. While Cineworld’s 5,500 UK staff have remained out of work and furloughed, bosses have introduced an incentive scheme that could benefit top executives with more than $200m in shares if the company’s share price can return to pre-pandemic levels within three years.