AmerisourceBergen Authorizes $650 Mln Special Share Repurchase Program

(RTTNews) - AmerisourceBergen Corp. (ABC) Monday said it has authorized a special $650 million share repurchase program for supplementing the company's previously announced warrant hedging strategy.

The special program will mitigate the potentially dilutive effect on the ownership interests of its then-existing stockholders that may result from the issuance of common stock upon exercise of the warrants issued in March 2013.

The firm said that this share repurchase program would not impact its expectations for the range of its adjusted diluted earnings per share from continuing operations for fiscal 2014. This backs the assumption that the company will repurchase $500 million of its common stock in fiscal 2014 under its previously announced repurchase programs, subject to market conditions.

Following the buyback along with the issuer capped call option transactions described in the company's Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2014, are expected to mitigate nearly 80 percent of the potentially dilutive effect that the issuance of shares of the Company's common stock upon exercise of the warrants could have.