Modo 203 was indeed able to import vertex normals, but failed to handle them properly when you did subsequent transformations on the imported geometry. For example, when parts were mirrored, it seemingly did not apply that transformation to the vertex normals, which resulted in shading errors on the mirrored polygons (like if the light would come from the opposite direction).
From what I've seen so far, Modo 301 does handle this correctly now.
(However I didn't try it on more complex transformations like i.e. morph maps yet.)