Land of Leather fell another 5p to a new low of 26p on fears that the furniture retailer will not be able to renegotiate debt covenants with banks by its year-end in nine weeks.

The group said in March that, at the end of January, it had £16 million of cash but pending bills of £53 million. It clearly needed cash, saying that it would try to renegotiate the terms of its overdraft facility by the end of July since trading was deteriorating.

Since then, Sleep Depot, which had been renting concessions in Land of Leather stores, went into administration, and Land of Leather has given warning that trading has worsened. A spokesman refused to comment.

Camec, Phil Edmonds’s miner in the Democratic Republic of Congo, rose 5p to 47¼p after Brock Salier, an analyst for Ambrian, said that the company’s £745 million market cap undervalued it since its disputed rights to explore in Congo had been secured. He said its African trucking business alone could be worth £250 million and that the company was “a new major in the making” while platinum and coal assets in Zimbabwe and Mozambique were undervalued.

D1 Oils lost another 1p to 22½p after Ambrian advised “reduce”, given that it would be some time before evidence that its first crop of Jatropha had value.

Belgravium, the maker of handheld stocktaking devices, lost 2p to 7½p after giving warning of a slowdown in customer orders.

Optos, the maker of eye-scanning devices, for which customers pay per use, rose 13½p to 163p after it reported strong growth in first-half revenue. However, the broker Nomura Code said the number of devices sold was lower than it expected while the average usage appeared to have dropped.

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