Cognex Corporation (NASDAQ:CGNX) Q1 2022 Results Conference Call May 5, 2022 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Susan Conway - Senior Director, IR

Rob Willett - President, CEO

Paul Todgham - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Andrew Buscaglia - Berenberg

Jacob Levinson - Melius Research

Jairam Nathan - Daiwa

Jim Ricchiuti - Needham & Co.

Joe Ritchie - Goldman Sachs

Joe Giordano - Cowen

Rob Mason - Baird

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to Cognex First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn this conference over to your host, Ms. Susan Conway, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, ma'am. You may begin.

Susan Conway

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter earnings call for 2022. With us are Rob Willett, Cognex' President and CEO; and Paul Todgham, our Chief Financial Officer.

I'd like to remind you that our earnings release and quarterly report on Form 10-Q are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.cognex.com/investor, both contain detailed information about our financial results.

During the call, we may use a non-GAAP financial measure if we believe it is useful to investors, we think it will help them better understand our results or business trends. You can see a reconciliation of certain items for GAAP to non-GAAP and Exhibit 2 of the earnings release.

Any forward-looking statements made in the earnings release or any that we may make during this call are based upon information that we believe to be true as of today. However, things can change, and actual results may differ materially from those projected or anticipated. For a detailed list of risk factors, you should refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K in our Form 10-Q filed tonight for Q1.

Now I'll turn the call over to Rob.

Rob Willett

Thanks, Sue. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We are pleased with our results for the first quarter of 2022. Cognex reported record first quarter revenue following a milestone year in 2021. It was also the second highest quarterly revenue in our 41-year history, and we reported an operating margin greater than 30% and an after-tax margin of 24%.

Revenue for Q1 grew by 18% year-on-year to $282 million, near the top of our expected range. Companies invested in automation and Cognex' industry-leading machine vision products to support the growth of e-commerce, address widespread labor shortages, and meet increasing requirements for product traceability.