Sales grew 8.3% to 20.2 billion euros.

However, its biggest subsidiary, broadcaster RTL Group, which generates about a third of its profit, reported a fall in core profit, missing expectations, weighed by weak advertising market and streaming losses.

Last October RTL scrapped a plan to sell its controlling stake in French TV group M6.

In November, Bertelsmann's Penguin Random House publishing business abandoned a planned $2.2 billion acquisition of Simon & Schuster after U.S. regulators raised anti-trust concerns.

Those failures have piled pressure on Chief Executive Thomas Rabe, who had earned plaudits for reshaping the family-owned media empire since his appointment in 2012.

($1 = 0.9225 euros)

(Reporting by Andrey Sychev and Tristan Veyet; editing by Christian Schmollinger and Jason Neely)