In today's world, most companies span several regions and sell across the world. As 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 Citrix
Where Citrix's sales were three years ago
Three years ago, Citrix was generating 51% of its sales from the Americas, though Europe was right behind in terms of company results. The EMEA region generated 40% of Citrix's sales.
Source: S&P Capital IQ.
Where Citrix's sales are today
Today, Citrix is bucking the broader trend and has seen its sales to America actually rise over the past three years, while its sales percentage to Europe plummeted.
Source: S&P Capital IQ.
What we're really looking at is continued strong execution in the Americas and Asia, while performance in Europe has been middling.
Segment |
3-Year Sales Growth |
---|---|
Americas |
103% |
Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) |
20% |
Asia Pacific |
70% |
Moving forward, it looks like Asia will pass the growth rate of the Americas. In the fourth quarter, the company posted EMEA revenues up 12% over last year, while Asia and Japan saw more than 37% revenue growth and a 40% growth in new product licenses. That's a significantly higher growth rate than the Americas, where Citrix saw 16% growth.
That's not too different a situation from the one some of Citrix's key competitors find themselves in. VMware
The point? Cutting-edge IT solutions like virtualization and collaboration have gone global. Finding growth and winning investments will require finding companies whose IT solutions are seeing continued growth across the global economy.
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