COSCO Pacific saw its third-quarter net profit decline by 48% year-on-year to US$40.03 million due to weakness in the Chinese export market, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company, a unit of China COSCO Holdings, which is controlled by state-owned firm China Ocean Shipping, said its port-handling throughput fell 4.2% year-on-year to 11.65 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) for the July-September period. Throughput was down 7% to 31.86 million TEUs for the first nine months of the year. COSCO Pacific has said that it will cut capital expenditure this year and stop looking at new port investments in order to save cash. It will also sell its 49% stake in COSCO Logistics to its parent company. Separately, China Ocean Shipping is said to have incurred a realized loss of US$610.6 million from derivatives trading for the year through September.