Needham & Company reiterate a Buy rating on Cognex Corporation (NASDAQ: CGNX) and raised its price target to $55 (from $52) after Q1 showed "robust growth" in core factory automation business. With multiple large orders from companies like Apple that will ship in the next 1-2 quarters, Cognex is expecting good things.

Needham analyst James Ricchiuti comments, "CGNX is generating multi-million dollar orders from customers in other markets, including logistics. With multiple drivers in consumer electronics and logistics, and increased adoption of its technology in China, we are raising our 2015 and 2016 rev estimates. Even with stepped up investment to support these and other initiatives, Street EPS estimates are likely to go meaningfully higher. We believe CGNX shares can move higher as more of these opportunities are realized over the next year. We reiterate our Buy rating."

He added, " ... it appears that the company won significant follow-on business at Apple, which ships in Q2 and Q3, making the June and Sept. quarters the largest revenue quarters of the year for the company. Perhaps as significant, mgmt. alluded to multiple large orders from customers in retail and logistics, which we believe are driving growth rates for CGNX's ID Products business in excess of 30%. Mgmt said it is now receiving a number of multi-million dollar orders ($2-5M), which suggests that the business is at an inflection point where larger orders will be more the norm, so much so that mgmt. said it may no longer disclose large orders."

The firm raised FY 2015 EPS from $1.22 to $1.54 and FY 2016 EPS from $1.66 to $1.77.

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Cognex click here. For more ratings news on Cognex click here.

Shares of Cognex closed at $47.01 yesterday.