• Netflix defended its acquisition of Warner Bros. as a strategic and informed move.
• Co-CEO Greg Peters says past media mega-mergers failed due to a lack of industry expertise.
• Netflix emphasized its healthy business and confidence in understanding the entertainment industry.

Netflix defended its announced acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery‘s studio and streaming business, saying it wouldn’t be a failure like other media mega-mergers that have come before it.

“It’s true. Historically, many of these mergers haven’t worked. A lot of these failures were because the companies doing the acquisitions didn’t understand the entertainment industry,” Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said, speaking during a call Friday with investors to discuss the deal. “These are key businesses we understand.”

He was responding to Rich Greenfield, analyst at LightShed Partners, who posed the question: “Why is this going to end differently than every other media transaction, essentially of this scale, in history?”

Another point Peters made was that while other M&A deals were about companies looking for a lifeline, Netflix isn’t doing the deal to save its business.

“We have a healthy business,” Peters said.

He didn’t specify any past mergers, but notable tie-ups that have widely been considered failures were AT&T buying Time Warner in 2018 and the AOL-Time Warner combo in 2000.

The streaming giant is making the biggest acquisition in its history — and one of the largest ever in entertainment — announcing Friday that it had struck a deal to acquire Warner Bros. from WBD for an equity value of $72 billion.