Cognex Corporation announces 2004 financial results

JANUARY 25--Cognex Corporation (Natick, MA) has announced revenue for the year ended December 31, 2004, of $201,957,000, a 35% increase over 2003 revenue of $150,092,000. And, Cognex reported net income for the year ended December 31, 2004, of $37,744,000, or $0.80 per diluted share, a 137% increase over the $15,951,000, or $0.36 per diluted share, reported in 2003. For the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2004, Cognex reported revenue of $43,909,000 and net income of $6,644,000, or $0.14 per diluted share.

"Cognex had an outstanding year in 2004, and I am pleased with our reported results," said Robert J. Shillman, Cognex chief executive officer and chairman. "Our annual revenue increased significantly over 2003 due primarily to a large ramp-up in the first half of the year from our OEM customers in the semiconductor and electronic capital-equipment industries. And, due to our careful cost-control measures, our profits increased at an even higher rate than revenue."

Shillman continued, "In addition to reporting strong financial results for 2004, there were also other exciting developments at Cognex. We introduced a number of products during the year that should help us grow our company in the future, including Checker 101, the first product in our family of simple-to-use and inexpensive sensors, and DataMan, a family of hand-held vision systems capable of reading numbers, letters, and symbols that are etched or stamped directly on the surface of parts. And, to expand our market presence around the world, we made additional investments in sales and marketing to take advantage of the many opportunities we see for machine vision. We expect that these initiatives will help drive our revenue in 2005, mitigating the slowdown in the OEM sector that we experienced as we exited the year."

For more details see www.cognex.com/investor/default.asp.