GTT needs to focus on what it does best, which is connecting people, said founder and Chairman Brian Thompson, on Monday's fourth-quarter 2019 earnings call.

"We found out with the acquisitions of Interoute and Hibernia that the development of capital-intensive infrastructure is not our real forté," he said, according to a transcript. "Our real forté still is using technologies to connect people around the world."

Last fall, the company announced plans to begin liquidating its infrastructure divisions, selecting Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs to help the company offload those assets.

"We came to the conclusion last fall that it was time to take those assets, put them into a division, and see what attractiveness there was for people who really do understand and want to be a financial source for the future of the development of technologies that we're on the forefront of right now," Thompson said.

According to Thompson, the decision to sell GTT's infrastructure division was ideal for two reasons. First, it would put those assets in the hands of companies are able to provide the long-term financing necessary, and second "it would give us financial freedom as we reduce our debt structure to allow us to expand what we're doing and what we did well."

GTT faces a mountain of long-term debt, which now totals more than $3.3 billion as of the fourth quarter. According to GTT CFO Dan Fraser, $2.6 billion of that debt is set to mature in 2025 and another $575 million of unsecured notes is set to mature at the end of 2024.

"I'm excited for our future," Thompson said in closing. "I think the fact that we've been able to stabilize after the difficult year of 2019."

GTT reported mixed results for the quarter, which saw the company's revenues climb 1% since last quarter to $424 million. However, the revenue growth was overshadowed by a 7% decline in revenues since the same quarter last year.

Fraser explained that the quarter-over-quarter growth was driven by several factors including a $1.5 million currency tailwind and a $1.5 million improvement in revenue credits issued or accrued for, "which was less of an improvement than we have targeted, but its moving in the right direction."

In the short term, GTT also benefitted from recently acquired KPN International, which the service provider closed on in December for $52 million. However, revenues were heavily offset by a decline in deferred revenue and negative net installs, which totaled a loss of 3.5 million, said Fraser.

"Fourth quarter 2019 results demonstrated continued improvement in our underlying operational metrics with revenue and adjusted EBITA growing on a sequential basis, including the KPN acquisition that was completed on Dec. 1," said GTT CEO Richard Calder.

During the call, Calder lauded the performance of the company's SD-WAN offerings, which he said had seen an increase in installs. We "continue to see very strong traction with our software-defined wide area networking product in both the direct and indirect sales channels," he said.

Moving forward, Calder said the company would continue to focus on driving growth through investments in its sales force.

According to Calder, GTT ended 2019 with 439 sales people ahead of the planned 400, and a 45% increase from 2018.