By Adria Calatayud

BT Group PLC said Thursday that it will explore funding additional broadband fiber deployments through a joint venture with external parties, as it reported lower adjusted earnings and revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021.

The U.K. telecommunications group said it is increasing its fiber-rollout target to 25 million homes and businesses by December 2026 from 20 million previously. The company said it will explore joint-venture structures over the first half of the current financial year to fund the additional five million premises.

BT said adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization--the company's preferred metric, which strips out exceptional and other one-off items--for the quarter to March 31 fell to 1.81 billion pounds ($2.55 billion) from GBP2.01 billion for the same period of fiscal 2020.

Adjusted revenue for the quarter fell to GBP5.29 billion from GBP5.63 billion a year before.

Analysts expected BT to report quarterly adjusted Ebitda of GBP1.83 billion on adjusted revenue of GBP5.29 billion, according to consensus estimates provided by the company.

BT said it expects adjusted revenue for fiscal 2022 to be broadly flat and adjusted Ebitda for fiscal 2022 to be between GBP7.5 billion and GBP7.7 billion.

BT also said it has reached an agreement with its pension-plan trustee that provides an enduring solution.

Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

05-13-21 0240ET