Jeffrey A. Stoops
Director, President and Chief Executive Officer at SBA Communications
Thanks Mark and good evening everyone. As is appropriate on Halloween, we are pleased to present a treat of an earnings report. The third quarter exceeded almost all expectations and benefited from the significant level of wireless deployment activity by our carrier customers. Notwithstanding, the broader challenging macroeconomic environment, our business was extremely busy and we were able to again increase our full-year outlook across all key metrics. We raised our full-year outlook for total revenue by $49 million after raising it by $64 million last quarter. Domestic organic contributions to leasing revenue growth in the third quarter were the highest for the year and our outlook implies an even higher contribution in the fourth quarter. Our services business produced the highest quarterly contribution of revenue and gross profit in our history and we again grew our services backlog. Our rate of return on invested capital was 10.6% for the quarter, the highest in at least 10 years. It really was a remarkable quarter.
In the US, each of our carrier customers remain busy during the quarter as they have throughout the year, building out their networks through the deployment of new spectrum bands. T-Mobile was our most active customer during the quarter, continuing their nationwide deployment of 2.5 gigahertz and 600 megahertz spectrum. Verizon, AT&T and Dish were again very active in the quarter with 5G-related new lease and amendment signings. Site leasing revenue growth from domestic new leases and amendments has been strong this year growing throughout the course of the year. We expect the contribution to revenue growth from domestic leases and amendments to be good again next year as well based on the strength of the organic leasing activity during 2022.
Internationally, we had our best organic leasing quarter of the year. During the third-quarter, we saw more of a shift toward upgrades at existing sites with 63% of new business signed up in the quarter coming from amendments to existing leases and 37% coming through new leases. International leasing activity was again led by strong contributions from Brazil and South Africa, our two largest markets. Brazil has performed very well this year. Not only has lease-up been above our internal expectations for the year, but we have also had larger contributions from CPI-based escalators while maintaining a relatively stable foreign exchange rate. In addition, we closed on the previously disclosed GTS acquisition of over 2,600 sites earlier in October. The integration of these sites has only recently begun but is proceeding smoothly and ahead of plan.
As a reminder, these sites have 2.1 tenants per tower and we believe there are opportunities for growth, particularly with recent 5G spectrum auctions in Brazil as a driver. These sites do contain some legacy oil leases, but a smaller percentage than the rest of our portfolio.
With regard to OI [Phonetic] we have begun conversations with some of the carriers that are absorbed -- absorbing the OI wireless business to discuss potential -- mutually beneficial and efficient arrangements around the integration of these networks. We still anticipate total churn of approximately $20 million to $30 million associated with the OI merger on our legacy sites, plus an additional estimate of approximately $3 million associated with the GTS Grupo Torre Sur sites. These numbers do not include any potential impact to pass-through reimbursements as those items will be neutral to tower cash-flow.
We also continue to produce revenue from Tennessee's [Phonetic] associated with OI's wireline business, which is unaffected by these mergers. We have a strong relationship with our Brazilian customers and look forward to working with them through this process.
With respect to our balance sheet due to early refinancings completed over the last few years and some well-placed interest-rate swaps, we have positioned ourselves well to address more challenging debt markets. We ended the third-quarter with a net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio of 6.8 times, below our target range and our lowest level in years. And even with our large fourth-quarter Brazilian tower acquisition, we expect to be at or below 7.0 times at year-end.
We have only one $640 million debt instrument maturing between now and October of 2024, representing approximately 5% of our debt outstanding, and instrument matures in March of 2023. And while interest rates are certainly higher today, we still have great access to incremental and refinancing debt capital given the strength of our cash flows. We expect to refinance our pending first quarter maturity during the next several months.
During periods, with an elevated cost-of-capital and increased interest rates, it is even more imperative to continue our disciplined and opportunistic approach to investing capital. We are fortunate to be in a strong industry benefiting from the continued growth in wireless, but also having the strength of significant free-cash flow generation largely fixed costs and scaled operations. During times like these, we really appreciate the strength of our underlying business.
We're very pleased with the third-quarter performance. As indicated by our updated outlook, we are also well-positioned to finish out 2022 on a high note. We will be providing our initial 2023 outlook on our next quarterly earnings call but based on this year's organic leasing activity and the significant network projects ahead of our customers, we anticipate our leasing results to continue to be strong into next year.
We will continue to be disciplined that our approach to capital allocation focused on maximizing returns for our shareholders. I want to thank our customers and team members for their support and contributions to our success and we look forward to a strong finish to the year.
And with that, Caroline, we are now ready for questions.