Dwindling global trade may have impacted profitability at COSCO Shipping.

The company, a unit of the country's biggest shipping enterprise China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co (COSCO), predicted that net profit for the first quarter would fall by over 50 percent from 357 million yuan in the same period of last year.

The company posted its best performance ever in 2008, thanks to robust growth in the first three quarters of the year.