Revenue during the quarter surged 40.27 percent to $134.94 million from $96.20 million in the previous year period. Gross margin for the quarter expanded 88 basis points over the previous year period to 79.08 percent. Total expenses were 72.27 percent of quarterly revenues, down from 83.01 percent for the same period last year. This has led to an improvement of 1075 basis points in operating margin to 27.73 percent.

Operating income for the quarter was $37.43 million, compared with $16.34 million in the previous year period.

However, the adjusted operating income for the quarter stood at $44.91 million compared to $23.15 million in the prior year period. At the same time, adjusted operating margin improved 922 basis points in the quarter to 33.28 percent from 24.06 percent in the last year period.

"I am delighted with our team’s strong performance in the first quarter," said Robert J. Willett, chief executive officer of Cognex. "The year started on an outstanding note. We made significant progress expanding our position with large customers in consumer electronics and logistics. And, our outlook for the broad factory automation market continued to improve as the quarter progressed. Our customers appear confident in their business prospects, and we believe they are eager to invest in Cognex machine vision and ID because of the benefits that these products bring to their companies."

For the second-quarter 2017, Cognex Corp expects revenue to be in the range of $165 million to $170 million.