Strattec Security is no longer just a Milwaukee lock-house living off Detroit platform awards. Jennifer Slater's team spent fiscal 2026 proving that a rightsized cost base and harder commercial terms can lift earnings even when original-equipment production is choppy and canceled electric-vehicle programs take volume out of the plant. Sales reached a company record on only a modest increase, and the year ended with a cash pile and no bank borrowings. The investment debate is narrower than the transformation slogan. The question is whether those operating gains survive a year when the three Detroit customers that still dominate the book are scheduled to cut output.
The Detroit Three still decide most of the franchise. General Motors represented 27 percent of fiscal 2026 sales. Ford contributed 21 percent. Stellantis contributed 16 percent. Management's own production read for those three names is a mid-single-digit decline in the new fiscal year, steeper than the broader North American build. Pricing added roughly two points to the top line and is described as less available from here. A two-year headcount reduction and plant-level savings did the other half of the margin work. That is a stronger company than the pre-Slater version, but it remains a company whose near-term volume is decided in Detroit product-planning rooms rather than in Milwaukee.
Fourth-quarter sales were essentially unchanged at $152 million after the finance team had braced for a decline. Adjusted earnings per share matched the year-ago print even as reported earnings absorbed a higher tax charge. Cash from operations still funded the first meaningful repurchase in a generation and left a fresh $40 million authorization unused at year-end. The next several quarters resolve whether gross margin can stay near the mid-teens when Detroit volumes fall and the Mexican peso stays firm, or whether fiscal 2026 turns out to have been the easy harvest year.