NATICK, Mass., Mar. 27 -- Cognex Corp. has reported that it expects revenue and net income for the first quarter ending April 2, 2000, to exceed most current estimates and to set quarterly records. The company anticipates that revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2000 will be greater than $53 million, and that earnings for the quarter will exceed, by approximately 15 percent, the current First Call consensus estimate of 29 cents per share. Customer demand is very strong in all industry segments and in both of our divisions. In particular, demand from each one of our major customers who manufactures capital equipment for the semiconductor industry continues to surpass even our most recent upbeat order forecasts, said Robert J. Shillman, Cognex's president, CEO and chairman.Shillman continued, Given both the current level of activity and our customers' expectations for continued growth, we now project that revenues for fiscal year 2000 will be close to $240 million, and that earnings per share will exceed ... by approximately 15 percent ... the current First Call consensus of $1.27. And, excluding the effect of goodwill, there is additional potential upside to these new estimates because they do not include the likely positive impact of our recent acquisition of the machine vision business of Komatsu Ltd., which was announced by Cognex on March 15th.