The surging dollar has hurt stocks outside the U.S. but one group at least stands to gain: companies that export to the world¡¯s largest economy.

Those with significant dollar earnings are set for a windfall, with major beneficiaries including heavyweight Asian chipmakers and European industrial and pharmaceutical firms. Shares of exporters to the U.S. have already beaten a broad gauge of non-American companies this year, based on Goldman Sachs Group indexes.

¡°Exporters to the U.S. should benefit not only via currency translation, but also in terms of the trade advantage,¡± George Maris, chief investment officer for global equities at Principal Asset Management, said in an interview in London. ¡°They should be able to show significant margin improvements, whether they¡¯re European or Japanese or Chinese exporters.¡±

The dollar has gained versus all its major peers this month as a stronger-than-expected U.S. economy has pushed back bets on Federal Reserve interest rate cuts. While exporters have been sold off in the global risk-off environment, they may be at the forefront of any rebound as the 12-month trailing earnings per share of those in Asia ex-Japan and Europe have tended to move in tandem with the greenback.

Some of the biggest expected gainers are in Asia. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which gets nearly two-thirds of its revenue from the U.S., posted its first profit increase in a year in the first quarter even as its scaled back its outlook for future expansion. Shares have rallied 32% this year in Taipei, while the island¡¯s benchmark index rose just 12%.

The equity markets of Japan and Taiwan are both likely to benefit from the stronger dollar given their relatively high proportion of offshore revenues, according to Morgan Stanley. A number of Japanese stocks have a correlation above 0.8 with the dollar-yen exchange rate, including Toyota, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Inpex, strategists including Daniel Blake in Singapore wrote in a client note this month.

Exporters will be helped both by the stronger dollar, and also by their exposure to the U.S. economic resilience. Taiwanese and Korean equities have ¡°strongly positive sensitivity¡± to U.S. economic activity, Goldman Sachs analysts including Timothy Moe in Singapore wrote in a note this week.

European pharmaceuticals and luxury firms are set to benefit from the dollar rally as they are among the sectors with the highest correlation to a stronger U.S. currency, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Danish weight-loss drugmaker Novo Nordisk ¡°is certainly one with an advantage as its production is concentrated in Europe but its biggest sales market is the U.S.,¡± said Laurent Douillet, senior equity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence in Paris.

The appreciating dollar and a growing risk-off mood in markets are likely to lead...