PEARSON PLC 
By Operating profit at RTL, of which Bertelsmann owns 75 percent, rose 8.4 percent to 207 million euros.
The Bertelsmann group, publisher of the "Fifty Shades" Trilogy, which has sold more than 80 million copies worldwide, also said on Thursday that quarterly earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) from continuing operations rose 8.6 percent to 303 million euros (256 million pounds).
"We are pleased with the positive development in the first three months, but the economic conditions remain challenging," Bertelsmann's finance chief Judith Hartmann said in a statement.
Both companies posted quarterly revenues that were little changed.
Bertelsmann, which also owns U.S. publisher Random House, has warned that its operating profit may ease this year on slow economic growth in the euro zone and an increase in investments, and RTL said it was still uncertain whether its profit would reach the year-earlier level.
"It's more a matter of caution than pessimism, but the facts are what they are. The start of the second quarter was soft," RTL co-Chief Executive Guillaume de Posch told journalists during a conference call.
The company's other co-Chief Executive Anke Schaeferkordt said that even the German television advertising market, which was the only one of RTL's major markets to grow in the first three months of 2013, eased at the start of the second quarter from strong year-earlier figures.
Bertelsmann cut its stake in RTL Group from 92.3 percent last month, seeking to fund growth and an overhaul of its business to catch up with rapidly-changing markets.
It has voiced ambitions to make major acquisitions and strike strategic partnerships to accelerate growth and become more international.
But it expects the recent acquisition of full ownership in music rights company BMG, the merger of Random with Pearson's (>> Pearson plc) book publisher Penguin and the takeover of financial services provider Gothia to boost its top line this year.
(Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)
