Whether you're looking to strengthen your portfolio through diversification or create new rivulets toward a raging waterfall of growth (see the symbolism?), international stocks can have a heavy hand in getting you there.
International economies have created a new global middle class, which means the world's spending and buying power lies there. Why not allocate a selection of your portfolio (however slim) to stocks in international markets? It's a move you may want to consider for so many reasons that we don't have room to list them all.
Why Add International Stocks to Your Portfolio?
When you stick strictly to U.S.-based stocks, do you ever wonder what you're missing out on? It's true that you might look both ways before crossing the street with international companies — the big hiccup might be that you have no personal experience with Asian companies. We get it.
However, you might find that the overvalued issues that plague many U.S. companies may not apply with international stocks. Other countries around the globe, namely India and China, each have populations of roughly 1.4 billion, which means that the productivity of these economies could continue to course past the U.S. China, which became the world's largest economy in 2014, is a global power in scale.
Furthermore, domestic companies continually expand their presence in international markets, so investing in foreign stocks and domestic stocks aren't always mutually exclusive. Benefiting from a broad range of opportunities cannot be ignored.
3 International Stocks to Consider Popping into Your Portfolio
In no particular order, consider looking at the following stocks for your portfolio. It's not hard, either. You can buy directly on international exchanges through your brokerage account. If your brokerage account doesn't allow that, you can tap into American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). These are certificates issued by U.S.-based financial institutions to trade them just like domestic stocks on U.S.-based exchanges.
Yandex NV (NASDAQ: YNDX)
Yandex NV, headquartered in Amsterdam, provides search engine and other online services in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan — hence its nickname, the "Google of Russia." Its Taxi segment includes Yandex Taxi and Uber in Russia and other countries. The Yandex Market segment includes price comparison service, an e-commerce marketplace and several small experiments. It also operates KinoPoisk, Yandex Music, Yandex Afisha, Yandex TV program and a subscription service as well as online advertising and listing fees. Ultimately, the company is a jack of all trades — as a rideshare and food delivery business. It also offers social network, cloud service and video platform as well as cloud services.
Yandex expects its total group revenues to land between RUB 340 and 350 billion for 2021. Its higher-than-expected growth has been enhanced by its search and advertising technologies, products for small and mid-sized businesses and increases in the search market share on iOS devices.
The company estimates adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year 2021 to be marginally lower compared with full year 2020 but over 48%. The company will also increase guidance for ride sharing from the 60% previously expected to a range of 65% to 70% for the full year 2021 (compared to 2020).
Its total e-commerce sector will increase three times year over year for the full year 2021 compared to 2020.
AstraZeneca Plc (NASDAQ: AZN)
AstraZeneca Plc, headquartered in Cambridge, England, is a holding company that researches, develops and manufactures pharmaceutical products. It develops products for oncology, cardiovascular, renal, metabolism and respiratory medical purposes.
Five of AstraZeneca's medicines made waves, as did its acquisition of Alexion. The company offered 2.5 billion COVID-10 vaccine doses around the world and saw double-digit growth in all major regions, including emerging markets. The company achieved approvals for Evusheld and Tezspire and all of it shows great news for the company's long-term growth projections, which includes dividend increases for shareholders.
AstraZeneca's total revenue increased 41% to $37,417 million, including COVID-19 vaccine revenues. Excluding vaccine revenues, revenue increased 26% to $33,436 million. The company's board increased its annualized dividend by $0.10 to $2.90, and has approved a second interim dividend for financial year 2021 of $1.97, payable in March 2022. The total dividend declared for financial year 2021 was $2.87.
STMicroelectronics NV (NYSE: STM)
STMicroelectronics NV, headquartered in Plan-Les-Ouates, Switzerland, designs, develops, manufactures and markets application-specific integrated circuits, full custom devices and semi-custom devices for analog, digital and mixed-signal applications.
In Q4, STMicroelectronics showed net revenues of $3.56 billion and gross margin of 45.2%, operating margin 24.9% and net income $750 million.
The company's net revenues and gross margin came in better than expected due to better-than-anticipated operation. Full year 2021 net revenues increased 24.9% to $12.76 billion, showing a strong performance across all end markets. Operating margin increased to 19.0% from 12.9% and income ramped up 80.8%.
The company plans to invest $3.4 billion to $3.6 billion in CAPEX to further increase our production capacity and to support strategic initiatives including its 300mm wafer fab in Italy.
The company hopes to drive 2022 revenues up to $14.8 billion to $15.3 billion.
Throw Some International Stocks on the Pile
Is your overall investment portfolio missing some international flair? Not sure about straight stock picking? You can certainly tap into other, more diversified options.
You can also try to spread around your risk by investing internationally through ETFs or mutual funds — or both. Use screening tools if you're hung up on deciding which ETFs or mutual funds to research and identify. You'll also save on expenses if you choose ETFs (but maybe not mutual funds. Do your due diligence and execute some cost comparisons before you land on the right stock for you.
