Overseas Operations Driving Profitability. The Largest US Companies Are Benefiting - What About the Rest?

Today's New York Times offers yet another summary of how earnings growth outside of the US can be an important contributor to company performance, yet can be harder to achieve for the under-resourced next tier of companies outside of the very largest. 

Similarly, our largest clients and contacts remained committed to their global operations over the course of the recession, though the middle market and smaller companies tended to pull in their ambitions and stick closer to their home markets. While we are seeing evidence of a thaw, it is just these fast-growth markets that are ever more important in offsetting slower-growth US and European economies. 

As the New York Times article observed: 

"In fact, the case of General Electric, which reports first-quarter earnings on Friday, neatly illustrates how overseas operations at many of the most familiar American companies have grown rapidly in recent years even as domestic activity has lagged. Total employment at the company dipped slightly to 305,000 in 2012 from 316,000 in 2005, but the number of workers it employs in the United States fell more sharply, to 134,000 from 161,000 in 2005. Over the same period, the proportion of sales that came from the United States fell to 47 percent from 55 percent."