These are tough times for smaller quoted companies. Nevertheless glimmers of hope can spring up in the most unexpected places.

The hardest part of running a small company must be to keep coming up with the goods, yet find that your share price graph looks much better upside down.

A good example is Printing.com, which specialises in printing items such as business cards and fliers at a hub in Manchester for franchise holders around the UK. The company has expanded steadily since it moved from Ofex (now known as Plus) to Aim in 2004.

This week it reported total retail turnover up 15.5 per cent to £24.6m for the year to March 31. Turnover from its franchises rose 11 per cent to £13.5m, operating profits 5.5 per cent to £2.3m and pre-tax profits 6 per cent to £2.4m. The number of franchise outlets rose from 198 to 249, and a further 14 have been added since the year end. The dividend is to be raised 20 per cent to 3p, giving a yield of 7 per cent.

Not a bad set of figures, yet the shares - which little more than 12 months after joining Aim at 28p were trading above 70p - closed on Thursday at 38½p, giving it a market capitalisation of £17m.

Tony Rafferty, the founding chief executive, is the biggest shareholder with 20 per cent and the remaining management owns 6 per cent. So liquidity in theory should not be an issue, and at the start of its Aim career the company was one of the most traded small cap stocks. Yet volumes have fallen away over the past 12 months.

The company has at least two years of good growth to come as the number of franchises rises to 400. It is also exporting core software, which is now multi-lingual as well as coping with any currency.

The company has started pushing into France, where it has five franchises supplied from Manchester. That should one day become a stand-alone operation, similar to its existing business in New Zealand.

When it does perhaps Mr Rafferty and his board would like to look at a secondary listing on Alternext. Last month Proventec became the first Aim company to move.

By coincidence its market capitalisation was close to Printing.com's when it took the secondary listing. But after a steady amount of trading on Alternext for the past three weeks, the company's shares have risen from 146p to above 189½p, giving it a market capitalisation of £23m.

Proventec's main business is the provision of steam-cleaning technology. Its equipment helps the NHS combat superbugs such as MRSA and clostridium difficile.

However, it has a strong European connection, inherited from the reverse takeover of Flintstone Technologies in July 2005.

The two biggest shareholders - InnoCleaning Concepts Holdings, with 37 per cent and MintInvest, with 18 per cent - are Dutch. David Chestnutt, chief executive, says the pair have introduced him to many European fund managers, who have consistently said they were not prepared to invest in Aim, but would follow the company on a European market. He now believes the company already has a better following in Europe than the UK.

Part of the reason might be the different way the European market works, with more family trusts and funds and less of an influence from pension funds. Mr Chestnutt stresses the company took the secondary listing for positive reasons, rather than negative feelings towards Aim.

Nevertheless, it will not be surprising if the many small companies suffering from the lack of liquidity on Aim start checking their European credentials.

Where there's muck . . .

Meanwhile, a heartening story for companies hoping to raise money on Aim. Nviro Cleantech, a specialist in making coal a cleaner fuel for power generation, arrived last August, about the most difficult time for a flotation in recent times. As a result its ambitions to raise £15m were thwarted, and it raised only £7.5m at 63p a share.

This week it reported a loss of £1.4m on zero revenues for the half to March 31. Yet is was able to return to the market and raise £10m through a placing at 45p a share. Shareholders including Foreign & Colonial and Henderson Global Investors are backing the company, as well as overseas investors from Sweden and Switzerland.

The company has a patented system of cleaning coal before it is burned for power. Its first commercial plant is expected to start operations by the end of this year in Cincinnati, generating its first revenues. But it is also poised to enter the Chinese and Indian markets.

It will build and operate the plants, which cost about $2m (£1m) and process about 100,000 tonnes of coal a year. The resulting fuel is close to anthracite, and has been stripped of pollutants such as sulphur and mercury.

As a result coal that costs $20 a tonne plus $20 a tonne to process can be sold at $80 a tonne or more. As always, where there's muck, there's brass.

david.blackwell@ft.com