Arctic: Financials Weekly - Recap of Q1 earnings season + waiting for rate hikes

Research evidence excerpt

Arctic: Financials Weekly - Recap of Q1 earnings season + waiting for rate hikes

Finance - Banking Weekly

11 May 2026 | 08:50

Recap of Q1 earnings season + waiting for rate hikes Highlights

Q1 earnings heatmaps included + 9 extra slides on growth/margins

In this week's edition of the banking weekly we have included a summary after all our Nordic and

Norwegian savings banks have reported. On slide 9 there is an earnings heatmap for the Nordic

banks, and another one for the Norwegian savings banks at slide 11. For the Norwegian banks the

common theme in Q1 was softer NII development than expected, with an average miss of 4% vs

consensus and 2% vs our estimates. This led to an average reported ROE of 12.4%, down 160bps

vs the same quarter last year. We've also included a few extra charts on the margin and volume

development for the various banks on slides 12-19. We're still waiting for a few of the smaller

banks outside our coverage to report Q1 results before we update our quarterly check-in with the

standard banks, but at least based on reports so far it's fair to say that the trend we've seen in

recent quarters with high lending growth at lower margins has continued in Q1 as well.

Norges Bank with rate hike, but we're still waiting for the first bank to follow

Last week Norges Bank raised the policy rate by 25bp to 4.25% on 7 May, citing inflation that

remains too high and has stayed above target for several years. The committee said the economic

outlook is not materially changed from March, when its rate path indicated a policy rate of

4.25-4.50% by year-end, and repeated that further hikes may still be needed amid uncertainty

around the Middle East, oil and gas prices. 3-month Nibor was up 6-7bps following the decision as

a rate hike was all but priced in already.