Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Co., Muhtar Kent, right, and President and CEO of Coca Cola India and South West Asia Atul Singh pose for photos holding bottles of Coca-Cola before the start of a meeting in New Delhi, India. An increasing thirst for Coca-Cola products in China, India and the Middle East helped boost the company’s international sales by 3 percent in the second quarter while volume remained flat in North America.SAN FRANCISCO – Major U.S. companies are starting to reap their most rapid growth in fertile lands of opportunity far from home.
Technology trendsetters Apple Inc., Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and Netflix Inc. all mined foreign countries to produce earnings or revenue that exceeded analysts’ projections in their latest quarters. Prodded by the steadily rising demand for Internet access and online services in developing countries, these technology companies will likely be wading even deeper into overseas markets for years to come.
“The philosophy is to start your growth in the states and then take your fight overseas,” says BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis. “That’s what the big guys are doing.”
The intensifying international focus extends beyond technology. Century-old companies such as Coca-Cola Co. and Ford Motor Co. also are hoping to make more money in countries including China and India.
Few U.S. industries are tying their fortunes to overseas markets as aggressively as the technology sector, where new sources of revenue are often just a matter of equipping people with a computing device and an Internet connection.