What was the percentage of revenue generated by retrofitting and improving lines in 2019-Q1 
anies' products today, they're still really being tested and not rolled out in any massive hardware sense this year and the focus is more on retrofitting existing lines and improving productivity.
Certainly, rising wages and current processes are still very labor-intensive, and so there's certainly focus on those areas to reduce cost. And then another factor that's going on certainly is new facilities are being built as companies diversify away from China to other emerging areas. I mean we even read about electronics manufacturers here in the U.S. and -- but certainly also in India and other markets, were seeing some investments, too, just start to begin.
So I'd say it's a great transitional year. It's one where the new technology is not here yet where there's a lot of focus on cost, and that's kind of certainly having its impact on our business. There is business for us for retrofitting and improving lines. But as you can see from our guidance, it's much less exciting and growth oriented than when major new lines are being implemented or new features are being brought to market.
Operator
Our next question is from Joe Giordano with Cowen and Company. Please proceed.
Joe Giordano -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst
I guess maybe -- wondering if you had an update on integration of some of the deep learning capabilities into the In-Sight platform. I've seen some of you guys at trade shows, and that's something you guys have been working toward. I think some of your competitors are close to launching something similar to that. So just any update there on being able to put all that technology onto a single platform?
Robert J. Willett -- Chief Executive Officer, President And Executive Director
Well, generally, Joe, we don't give a comment or we don't comment about future product launches which may or may not be coming from Cognex. So that's not something that I would comment on. Certainly, we're very excited and we're seeing some excellent growth in our deep learning business, and it's an area we think we're leading in from a technology point of view. And of course, making that technology more accessible and easier to use would be what one would expect a product road map to include, but I'm not going to get specific about when and in what form we might launch future products with that technology.
Joe Giordano -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst
Okay. When I think about where your balance sheet is and what you've done over the last couple of years, you've obviously -- you were hiring like crazy to meet demand. So how do you feel you guys are positioned now in terms of like is your capacity too high from a human capital perspective? And in terms of the financial capabilities, I was a little surprised to see no buyback this quarter. Just how should we think about that going forward?
Robert J. Willett -- Chief Executive Officer, President And Executive Director
Yes, Joe, I'll talk about the sort of capacity issue then I'll invite John to comment on the buyback. So you're right. We've been investing very heavily in the businesses. We saw some phenomenal growth and phenomenal potential in the business. Obviously, 44% growth in 2017. We were, in a sense, under capacity as we -- we didn't have the capacity to support that level of ongoing business as we exited the year. So we were doing some catch up in '18.
What you're seeing now is we're going to be slowing down significantly on hiring and expense growth, and we're reallocating resources because we're -- Cognoids are very talented and capable individuals that we take great effort to hire, have the cultural fit with our business and train and develop. So they're great assets for us that we're going to or are in the process of redeploying toward high-growth areas of the business such as logistics.
So we think it gives us extra capacity for what we want to do in the future, but we certainly are slowing down expense growth and hiring based on what we see and we've been discussing on this call. Now I'll turn it to John on the buyback in Q1 question.
John J. Curran -- Senior Vice President of Fi
anies' products today, they're still really being tested and not rolled out in any massive hardware sense this year and the focus is more on retrofitting existing lines and improving productivity.
Certainly, rising wages and current processes are still very labor-intensive, and so there's certainly focus on those areas to reduce cost. And then another factor that's going on certainly is new facilities are being built as companies diversify away from China to other emerging areas. I mean we even read about electronics manufacturers here in the U.S. and -- but certainly also in India and other markets, were seeing some investments, too, just start to begin.
So I'd say it's a great transitional year. It's one where the new technology is not here yet where there's a lot of focus on cost, and that's kind of certainly having its impact on our business. There is business for us for retrofitting and improving lines. But as you can see from our guidance, it's much less exciting and growth oriented than when major new lines are being implemented or new features are being brought to market.
Operator
Our next question is from Joe Giordano with Cowen and Company. Please proceed.
Joe Giordano -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst
I guess maybe -- wondering if you had an update on integration of some of the deep learning capabilities into the In-Sight platform. I've seen some of you guys at trade shows, and that's something you guys have been working toward. I think some of your competitors are close to launching something similar to that. So just any update there on being able to put all that technology onto a single platform?
Robert J. Willett -- Chief Executive Officer, President And Executive Director
Well, generally, Joe, we don't give a comment or we don't comment about future product launches which may or may not be coming from Cognex. So that's not something that I would comment on. Certainly, we're very excited and we're seeing some excellent growth in our deep learning business, and it's an area we think we're leading in from a technology point of view. And of course, making that technology more accessible and easier to use would be what one would expect a product road map to include, but I'm not going to get specific about when and in what form we might launch future products with that technology.
Joe Giordano -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst
 Okay. When I think about where your balance sheet is and what you've done over the last couple of years, you've obviously -- you were hiring like crazy to meet demand. So how do you feel you guys are positioned now in terms of like is your capacity too high from a human capital perspective? And in terms of the financial capabilities, I was a little surprised to see no buyback this quarter. Just how should we think about that going forward?
Robert J. Willett -- Chief Executive Officer, President And Executive Director
Yes, Joe, I'll talk about the sort of capacity issue then I'll invite John to comment on the buyback. So you're right. We've been investing very heavily in the businesses. We saw some phenomenal growth and phenomenal potential in the business. Obviously, 44% growth in 2017. We were, in a sense, under capacity as we -- we didn't have the capacity to support that level of ongoing business as we exited the year. So we were doing some catch up in '18.
What you're seeing now is we're going to be slowing down significantly on hiring and expense growth, and we're reallocating resources because we're -- Cognoids are very talented and capable individuals that we take great effort to hire, have the cultural fit with our business and train and develop. So they're great assets for us that we're going to or are in the process of redeploying toward high-growth areas of the business such as logistics.
So we think it gives us extra capacity for what we want to do in the future, but we certainly are slowing down expense growth and hiring based on what we see and we've been discussing on this call. Now I'll turn it to John on the buyback in Q1 question.
John J. Curran -- Senior Vice President of Fi