Image source: GoPro
With all the attention GoPro Inc. (GPRO 4.65%) received on the heels of its biggest-ever product introduction last month -- which notably included its Karma drone, two HERO5 cameras, new editing apps, and a cloud-based subscription service called GoPro Plus -- it's been difficult for investors to focus on anything else.
But these new products aren't the only catalyst helping it return to sustained growth and profitability. During GoPro's most recent quarterly earnings conference call, management indicated that the company's international business is poised to pick up steam soon.
"We expect GoPro's presence in international markets to get a big boost ..."
According to Anthony Bates, GoPro president and director:
We expect GoPro's presence in international markets to get a big boost later this year, when we begin offering localized customer experiences in multiple languages, including German, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. This includes packaging, camera UI, and software apps, as well as marketing materials and point-of-purchase displays. This [will] match directly to a parallel initiative, developing localized content for our international websites, social media, and in-store merchandising. The goal for our international expansion is as simple as it is ambitious -- make GoPro easy and accessible for everyone.
To be fair, GoPro's new products are still arguably the most crucial piece of its puzzle right now. But this concerted effort to expand GoPro's reach and accessibility overseas is a key complementary part of that plan.
So it begins
Incidentally, we've already seen the "camera UI" part of Bates' global promise fulfilled in that both the new HERO 5 Black and HERO 5 Session cameras not only support multiple languages for the text interface but also now feature voice control in seven languages, with additional languages the way.
It should also help that in the second quarter, GoPro also announced an exclusive partnership with India's largest consumer-electronics retailer, Reliance Digital, to bring its products to shelves on up to 1,800 Reliance Digital locations across the country. Assuming its simultaneous initiatives to improve localized content for each of its other international websites, social media, and merchandising have gone as planned -- and keeping in mind that the HERO 5 cameras only just became available at select retailers and on GoPro.com earlier this week -- GoPro investors should witness a nice bump in international sales in the coming quarters.
Perspective is in order
That's not to say international revenue isn't already a big contributor for GoPro. For perspective, in GoPro's most recent quarter, revenue from the Americas comprised $124.6 million, or around 56.4% of total sales. Meanwhile, revenue from Europe was $60.7 million, or 27.5% of total sales, and revenue from the Asia-Pacific region was $35.5 million, or 16.1% of sales. But that also represented a shift toward domestic consumers from the same year-ago period, when the Americas, Europe, and APAC regions represented 50.5%, 32.7%, and 16.8% of total sales, respectively.
I should also note that GoPro's geographic mix unsurprisingly tends to make a dramatic shift toward the Americas during our lucrative holiday shopping season. In the fourth quarter of 2015, for example, the Americas represented a whopping 65.4% of GoPro's $436.6 million in total revenue, while Europe and APAC rounded out that total at 23.4% and 11.2%, respectively.
In the end, however, if GoPro's international markets enjoy a boost soon as management predicts, that should result in a much more even geographic distribution, not to mention the positive network effects that tend to come with making GoPro's products more ubiquitous in a growing number of countries.
