STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – The quarterly results of Swedbank, the Swedish lender, were slightly lower than anticipated on Wednesday. A drop in interest income disappointed investors and sent its shares plummeting more than 4%.

After an impressive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2021, Nordic economies encountered a bump at the back of the year as a result of Omicron coronavirus variants and other restrictions.

Jens Henriksson, CEO of Swedbank, stated that the quarter was “with a stable underpinning business.”

“At a similar time, it was quarter marked by pandemics and we currently see high sick rates among our workers.”

Some markets have already taken steps to reduce the risk of pandemics. They also face the challenge of resurgent inflation, which has caused interest rates to rise for the first-time in many years.

Sweden’s oldest bank, a retail bank, reported fourth quarter operating profits down 3.4% from the previous year to 5.97 billion Swedish Crowns (6644.93 Million), which is slightly less than what analysts predicted at 6.10 billion crowns in Refinitiv poll.

The bank’s shares were at 8.2% GMT. That was lower than the 0.3% gain recorded by the European banking index.

The increase in commission income was better than anticipated at 19%, to 4.02 Billion Crowns. However, interest income (including mortgages) dropped 0.3% to 6.55 Billion crowns. This compares with analysts’ expectations of 6.62B crowns.

From Analyst Notes Credit Suisse (SIX,) JP Morgan mentioned the loss of interest income to explain the rise in the share price.

The net credit impairments were positive up to the tune of 66.7 million crowns. This implies that there was a reversal of losses previously forecasted. However, the difficult-to-predict financial gains fell 71% over the year due to lower fixed income trading.

In total, the cost for the year fell just short of the target figure of 20.5 trillion. These figures do not include expenses related money-laundering investigations. While the cost target for 2022 is not changed, it does not include a new Swedish bank tax.

Swedbank is increasing payouts to shareholders as economic conditions improve.

On Tuesday, the bank stated that it had proposed a 2 crown per share special dividend. That would bring 2021’s total payout up to 11.25 crowns.

($1 =9.2568 Swedish crowns