Shares in Super Retail Group have dropped 12 per cent after investors punished the company for a disappointing sales result.

Super Retail Group on Friday announced a six per cent rise in sales during the first half of the 2012/13 financial year and flagged a profit of between $61 and $62 million for the period, which was up slightly from a year ago.

But the result fell well shy of investor expectations in light of the 23 per cent jump in profit the company recorded last financial year.

The company’s share price dropped from Thursday close of $12.50 to as low as $9.50 on Friday, before climbing back to $11.00 by 1545 AEDT.

The company, whose brands include Supercheap Auto, BCF and sports retailer Rebel, has been something of a market darling for retail investors in recent years, with its share price climbing from around $2 a share in early 2009 to more than $14 late last year.

Investors had priced in continued strong sales growth for the company – with its price to earnings ratio sitting around 24 prior to Friday’s slide.

Chief executive Peter Birtles attributed the worse than expected result to a number of “short term challenges”, including problems with the company’s IT system and the impacts of the slowdown in the mining sector.

But he said the company was working to improve its performance in the second half of the financial year.

“These are predominantly internal issues and we are confident these have now been addressed,” he said.

“We have implemented a number of initiatives to underpin gross margin performance across all three divisions in the second half.