Walgreens Boots Alliance has bought $1.19 billion worth of stock in Valley Forge’s AmerisourceBergen  after the two companies agreed to amend their business partnership, writes John George for Philadelphia Business Journal.

According to the revised agreement, the Walgreens Boots Alliance was able to immediately exercise warrants to buy nearly 22.7 million shares of stock in AmerisourceBergen. Originally, these warrants were scheduled to be exercisable in March next year.

AmerisourceBergen entered into a ten year relationship with the retail pharmacy chain Walgreen Co. and its international health products joint venture deal with Alliance Boots three years ago.

The long-term deal is focused on streamlining the distribution of prescription drug products. As part of the agreement, there is a clause that allows the Walgreen and Alliance Boots joint venture to take a minority equity position in AmerisourceBergen.

Earlier this year, the Walgreens Boots Alliance purchased $1.17 billion in AmerisourceBergen stock in order to increase its equity stake in the company to 15 percent.

With this latest purchase, the Walgreens Boots Alliance now owns close to 56.9 million shares of AmerisourceBergen common stock, which is 23.9 percent of its total equity.

Read more about the agreement at Philadelphia Business Journal here, and check out previous VISTA Today coverage of AmerisourceBergen here.