CANTON, Mass., May 1 -- Robotic Vision Systems Inc. reported revenues of $56,743,000 for the second quarter ended March 31, 2000, an improvement of $9,663,000 or 20.5 percent from the first quarter of fiscal 2000. Operating income for the quarter was $4,240,000, while net income totaled $3,285,000, or 9 cents per share. These results compare with revenues of $27,294,000 and a net loss of $4,189,000, or 17 cents per share, in the second quarter of the prior year. The semiconductor industry is building capacity and demand for our chip inspection equipment is at an all-time high, said Pat V. Costa, RVSI's chairman and CEO. At the same time, our machine vision and bar code product lines continue to find new applications across a broad cross-section of industry. Our bookings for the quarter rose to $60.9 million, a record for any quarter in the company's history, and our backlog at March 31, 2000, stood at $48.2 million. Costa stated that the company was working to improve operating performance through gains in gross margin and constraints on operating expenses. We approached our goal of 35 percent operating expense in the second quarter; we are evaluating whether we can set an even more aggressive target for the future. In the current quarter, our target is to make progress toward our gross margins goal of 50 percent, he commented.