In today's world, most companies span several regions and sell across the world. As my Foolish colleague Morgan Housel notes, 10 years ago, less than a third of S&P 500 revenue growth came from abroad. Today, that area makes up half of the S&P 500's growth.

And that number is growing. The truth is, investors regularly underestimate how much demand comes from abroad. More importantly, for large, multinational corporations that have already established a presence in their home markets, much of their future growth comes from abroad.

With that in mind, today we're looking at Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB). We'll examine not only where its sales and earnings come from, but how its sales abroad have changed over time.

Where Kimberly-Clark's sales were five years ago
Five years ago, Kimberly-Clark produced 54% of its sales within the United States.

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Where Kimberly-Clark's sales are today
Today, while the United States is still a huge part of Kimberly-Clark's story, its Asian and Latin American -- i.e., emerging market -- sales have made enormous strides and now constitute 34% of sales, while Europe is shrinking.

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Segment

5-Year Sales Growth

United States

11%
Canada

35%
Europe

8%
Asia, Latin America & Other

67%

This pattern isn't too different from Kimberly-Clark's main peers. Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) has effectively found all its sales growth outside the United States in the past five years. Today, the company serves 4.4 billion of the world's 7 billion people. That's simply incredible. Then we have Clorox (NYSE: CLX), a peer company that has seen its international sales grow 44% over the past five years. The problem is, the company is growing international sales off of a smaller base.

In the end, while companies like Clorox scratching the surface on their international opportunity are intriguing, the superior play looks to be already established global players like Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark. Stagnant growth in the United States should be a continuing trend across these companies for the next decade, so if you're an investor looking for growth, taking full advantage of opportunities in growth markets is key to outperforming the market.

Keep searching for global opportunities
There's a reason companies are seeing outsized growth around the world; in the past decade, emerging market consumer spending grew 250%, leaving the growth rates of the U.S. and Europe in the dust. If you're an investor scanning the world for opportunities, look no further than our new report "3 Companies Set to Dominate the World." In the report, Fool analysts select three companies who have an international growth opportunity that's simply stunning. The report is free, but it won't be available forever, so get your copy by clicking here today!