With our greatly improved financial flexibility, we now have increased optionality among these products, and we will utilize our models to determine the best anticipated return for our shareholders. Looking at these priorities. First, we continue to invest in the business with paid capital expenditures of $494 million for the first 9 months of the year. This was down slightly due to the timing of capital projects. Capital expenditures continue to focus on our gold and brewery modernization and expanding our capabilities to drive efficiencies, cost savings and sustainability initiatives. And second, we made further progress in reducing our net debt. We ended the quarter with net debt of $5.4 billion, a decline of $584 million since December 31, 2022.
This was supported by our July cash repayment of our $500 million Canadian debt upon its maturity on July 15. As a reminder, our outstanding debt is essentially all at fixed rates. Our exposure to floating rate debt is limited to our commercial paper and revolving credit facilities, both of which had zero balance outstanding at quarter end. Given our strong EBITDA performance and lower net debt, our net debt to underlying EBITDA ratio declined to 2.2x. This is in alignment with our long-term goal of under 2.5x. And I would like to add that in October, S&P Global upgraded its risk rating for Molson Coors to BBB from BBB-. And that brings me to our third priority, returning cash to shareholders. We paid a quarterly cash dividend of $0.41 per share and maintain our intention to sustainably increase the dividend.
And as announced at our Strategy Day on October 3, our Board authorized a new share repurchase program of up to $2 billion over the next 5 years. It replaces and supersedes the repurchase program previously approved by the Board in the first quarter of 2022. The new program is intended as a mixture of sustained and opportunistic purchases as part of our balanced and cohesive approach to prioritizing capital allocation intended to improve shareholder value creation. In summary, we are extremely pleased with our third quarter performance and confident in our ability to sustainably deliver top and bottom line growth in the years to come. And with that, I’ll turn it over to you, Gavin.
Gavin Hattersley: Thank you, Tracey. In the third quarter, we continued the growth trajectory that we’ve been on for nearly two full years. In the quarter, each of our top 3 global markets are growing net sales revenue, volume, share or all 3. In the U.S., our shipments were up over 1 million hectoliters compared to the third quarter of 2022, and we were the top volume share gainer in the industry. Coors Light and Miller Lite are on track to collectively deliver net sales revenue growth for the third straight year, something that had not done since Miller and Coors came together in 2008. Coors Banquet volumes were up nearly 30%. Coors Light volumes were up double digits and Miller Lite volumes were up high single digits. We were the top dollar share gainer in the U.S. economy segment.
In fact, our two biggest economy brands grew dollar and volume share of industry in the quarter. We have gained the second most U.S. share of flavored alcohol beverages of all major brewers. We grew share nationally in Canada in every region of the country and in every segment of our industry. Coors Light widened its position as the #1 light beer in the country, a position it has held since March. And the Molson brands grew share. Miller Lite grew volumes by 50%, and we grew more share in flavor alcohol beverages than any other company in the industry. We were the best-performing brewer in the UK in both value and volume share. Adding some very exciting news from the UK market, we are now the #2 brewer in London after ranking a distant #5 player only a few years ago.
The transformation of our portfolio in the London market is a real testament to our team’s commitment to a clear strategy that drives focus across all channels and customers. Additionally, Madri is now the second largest above premium lager in the on-premise and third largest world beer in the total trade across the UK. And in Central and Eastern Europe, Ožujsko, our core power brand in Croatia is growing value share of the beer category year-to-date, and it has over 50% value share of the core segment. Now of course, our business has benefited greatly from the broader dynamics of the U.S. beer industry over the past 7 months. But as you can see, the improvement in our business is being driven by more than one market. Improvement in our business is being driven by more than a couple of brands.
The improvement in our business is being driven by more than one segment of the category and the improvement in our business predates April 1. Year-to-date, each of the top 3 biggest global markets are growing net sales revenue, volume and volume share. And as this slide plainly shows the trajectory of our business has been on the upswing. And in regard to our future, we believe we can lap these results in 2024. We delivered top and bottom line growth in 2022. We’re on track to do so again this year. And we plan to do so next year, too. That’s the plan we outlined at our Strategy Day last month. We’ve already gained thousands of tap handles across the U.S. since the beginning of the second quarter. We are already gaining significant amounts of shelf space this fall as retailers work to adjust their space to meet consumer trends.
Now I have seen some, let’s say, interesting commentary around shelf space. So I want to be extra clear here. The vast majority of chain retail accounts typically update their shelf space once a year due to the complexity of lining all their stores. And they typically do so in the spring. Over 50 retailers have made space changes in late summer or fall due to the massive shift in consumer purchase behavior we have seen since April 1. This is not common. In fact, in the last 5-plus years, we haven’t had any adjustments in the summer or a change to the premium segment in the fall. Among the chains that moved their resets up to the fall, Molson Coors was the biggest beneficiary with Miller Lite and Coors Light gaining 6% to 7% more shelf space.
For brands of this size, that is a massive amount of space. In fact, it’s tens of thousands of cubit-feet of space. Regardless of how some folks might characterize the current environment, those are effects. The conversations for spring resets are well underway. And while we can’t exactly predict the future, it’s safe to say that we expect to gain more shelf space for our big brands in those resets as well. These retailers are smart businesspeople. And when consumer trends shift to the degree they are shifting, chain retailers have two options: chain shelf space allocations to meet the trends or leave money on the table. And they’re not going to leave money on the table. It’s as simple as that. We’ll have more to say about 2024 on our fourth quarter call in February.
But between the work we have done to improve our business trajectory and the current dynamics in our industry, we feel confident in this year, confident in our ability to grow next year and confident in our ability to grow in the years ahead. And with that, we’ll take your questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We now have Lauren Lieberman from Barclays.
Lauren Lieberman : Great I was just curious if you could talk a little bit about going back to the beginning of the call, Tracey’s comments and in the release on the beer category in the U.S. being stronger than what you had previously expected. So any color you can add on that would be great. Kind of what do you think some of those key drivers are? Is it around key consumer cohorts? Just color on the beer industry backdrop would be great.
GavinHattersley : Thanks, Lauren. Look, I mean, in Q1, the industry was down 2.7 and Q2 was down 2.5. And in Q3, it was down 1.3, that’s in the U.S., obviously as per Circana. So an improvement and as Tracey said, that wasn’t the level of improvement that we were expecting to see. And obviously, hard seltzers are still a big part of that decline. Certainly while some buyers are switching categories, and certainly, our data says that some drinkers have left within the category, we’re gaining share, Miller Lite, Coors Light are healthy and growing share strongly. And that share has been stable for the last 25 weeks. It’s a structural change to the industry. That is sticking, whether you look at it on a 1-week basis, a 4-week basis, a 13-week basis or a 26-week basis, it has stuck.
