Owning Alcon (NYSE:ACL) for the last five months has been like living in a Three Stooges skit -- I've felt like I'm getting poked in the eyes a lot. Such is the price of buying an overvalued stock. Alcon was then, and is now, an exceptionally well-run medical technology company, but overpaying for even a well-run company can come back to haunt you in a very real way.

While this quarter's results may not justify the eye-care company's stock price, they were nevertheless still respectable. Revenue was up a bit more than 8% and topped out in the double digits, if you exclude the impact of foreign currency. All three major units posted sales growth, though pharmaceuticals were again the leader.

Below the revenue line, there's still plenty to like. Alcon's gross margins, already at a high level, climbed again in the first quarter, and operating margins, too, were higher on a year-over-year basis when you adjust for the impact of stock compensation expenses. All in all, even with those costs, net income grew by more than 18%.

If analyst chatter is to be believed (I'll let you all judge for yourself), part of the reason for concern here now is the sales of the new ReSTOR intraocular lens. This is a tough market, and there's a fair bit of concern about how competition between Alcon and rivals like Advanced Medical Optics (NYSE:EYE) will play out. So far at least, I'd say Alcon is doing well, but not quite as well as people had hoped -- leading to questions about whether this company can sustain the growth that investors had been counting on.

On the pharmaceutical side, there wasn't a lot in the way of major positive news. A collaboration with Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) is nice, but won't bear fruit for a long time (if ever). And progress with Retaane is still hard to discern, particularly with the company withdrawing its European application for the drug. Given the need for new trials, this could take awhile, because it might be difficult to enroll patients when Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) / OSIPharmaceutical's (NASDAQ:OSIP) Macugen is available and Genentech's (NYSE:DNA) Lucentis is on the way.

Alcon might get some added sales because of troubles at Bausch & Lomb (NYSE:BOL), but not enough to really make a major difference in the valuation. While they're no longer dramatically overvalued, I still wouldn't call these shares cheap at today's prices.

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Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).