KT&G said Wednesday that its outbound sales of cigarettes broke the 500-billion-unit mark, fanning expectations that the cigarette-maker’s export sales will outperform its domestic sales within the year.

According to KT&G’s cigarette sales data, its outbound sales volume reached 500.2 billion cigarettes as of Sept. 15. Counting in the cigarettes produced in KT&G’s overseas factories, the overall number increases to 532.1 billion sticks. One pack has 20 sticks.

KT&G is now the world’s fifth-largest tobacco manufacturer, with a cumulative outbound revenue of $5.77 billion ($4.93 million).

KT&G’s outbound sales performance has seen a drastic improvement since the former state-run enterprise was privatized in 2002. The annual outbound sales was only 2.5 billion cigarettes in 1999, which jumped to 28.5 billion in 2005 and 40.7 billion in 2012. The sales revenue, $14.8 million in 1999, leaped more than 37-fold to $560 million in 2012.

The Korean tobacco-maker also expanded its overseas market from some Middle Eastern countries and Russia to 50-some countries in Southeast Asia, the Americas and Europe.

KT&G officials expect the company’s overseas revenue to surpass the domestic performance for the first time in its history. In the beginning of the year, the domestic sales dropped to 17.1 billion cigarettes, down 32 percent from a year earlier, due to an increase in tobacco and related tax. During the same period, the overseas sales rose to 22.9 billion cigarettes, up 33.9 percent.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)