Here's How Coach Keeps Growing

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 Coach (NYSE: COH). We'll examine not only where its sales and earnings come from, but how its sales abroad have changed over time.

Where Coach's sales were five years ago
Five years ago, Coach produced 74% of its sales within the United States.

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Where Coach's sales are today
Today, while Coach still sees 70% of its sales in the United States, the growth of its Asia operations is a key driver of the company's overall growth.

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

The growth of Coach's international markets has seen its most acceleration in the past half decade. A five-year sales growth chart shows the stunning growth the company has been able to achieve in spite of a global recession:

While Coach might break sales into other international opportunities, there's little doubt which market is the company's largest opportunity: China. Here's what Coach's CEO had to say in the company's latest conference call:

"As we've discussed many times, outside of North America, China is our largest geographic opportunity, given the size of the market and the rate of growth. During the quarter, our sales rose again sharply from prior year, fueled by distribution and significant double-digit, same-store sales."

Coach isn't alone in this opportunity. As a mass market brand, Nike (NYSE: NKE) already has a similar sales level in China and emerging markets as it does across Europe. Ralph Lauren (NYSE: RL) saw sales grow from $44 million to $658 million in Asia across the last half-decade!

In the end, this just all shows that while companies like Coach and Ralph Lauren have seen enormous growth across the last decade in Asian markets, there's plenty of opportunity ahead.

Keep searching for global opportunities
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