I am the President and CEO of Strattec. Before we get going, I just wanna touch on a safe harbor statement. As you may be aware, we may be making some forward-looking statements during this presentation, as well as during the Q&A. As noted here, any of those statements are covered under a safe harbor. For those of you who may not be familiar with Strattec, I joined the company in July of 2024. Strattec has been a public company since 1995, and as you can see from the illustration on the right, we have a very diverse product set that serves automotive from products such as, at the very beginning of the vehicle, power frunk latches, to the rear of the vehicle, power lift gate and tailgate, including lock sets and key fobs.
I'll talk a little bit more about our products on a subsequent slide. One of the exciting things that I'd like to talk about is, Monday we launched a new brand, and we are under a transformation, which I will talk about a bit more in subsequent slides. We really see our brand launch as instrumental in how we talk about our company with our customers and our employees as we lay the groundwork for future revenue and make sure that we have the culture that drives the transformation with our team. To talk a little bit more about our products and our customers, as you can see from the left side of the chart, we've got a pretty diverse product portfolio with door handles, Power Access, keys and lock sets and latches.
Our customer sales traditionally primarily have been heavily weighted on North American customers with GM, Ford, and Stellantis. Our Strattec headquarters is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where we also have component manufacturing, sales, engineering, and testing. We have a customer center in Auburn Hills, Michigan, with program management, engineering, sales, and testing. Our manufacturing or assembly manufacturing and more component manufacturing is spread across three facilities in Juárez, Mexico, a facility in León, Mexico, and a distribution center in El Paso, Texas. Talking about our products a little bit more, we really provide access products for vehicles across permission, motion, and hold. The way to think about that is permission is our products that allow you to get into the vehicle securely and safely with lock cylinders, key fobs, mechanical keys.
Our motion products cover power access, so power liftgates, power tailgates, power sliding doors. Our latch products are all around security and safety once you're in the vehicle. These products meet FMVSS regulations and provide both the consumer and customers the confidence that we have safe products across the vehicles. Our capabilities are diverse from design and engineering to plating, stamping, PCBA manufacturing, and assembly. Since I joined the company last July, we've been singularly focused on transforming the business across four strategic initiatives. First, it starts with making sure we have the team and the culture to drive the transformation.
As I spoke about our branding, part of our branding effort was also to make sure we have the right culture pillars for our organization, focused around increasing our innovation, enhancing collaboration, and driving for results with a focus on our customers. We put a lot of focus on making sure we have operational excellence and business operating systems to deliver the results. We've also started preliminary stages of getting optimizing our cost structure and making sure that we have the right headcount and cost to support the sales that we have in the business. From a value proposition standpoint, we captured some low-hanging fruit with annual pricing of $8 million in 2025, and we're very early in the stages of laying the groundwork for what customer diversification with an initial focus on North America for longer term revenue growth.
From a modernization standpoint, we've worked a lot on our process, tools, and systems, as well as some simple automation to make sure that we're driving for a future business model. I'm pleased to say that the actions that we've put across those four strategic priorities have really translated into results. As you can see, both from a gross profit and margin and cash equivalent standpoint, we are seeing the progress across our strategic priorities. As we focus a bit more towards the future, I think it's important to touch on the long cycle nature of our business. What legacy Strattec had focused on historically was once an RFQ, a request for quote, came from customers, that is when we would engage to facilitate an award, to get to start a production for our customers.
That's really a two to three year cycle. To make sure we're providing the most value to our customers, we are now focused on working well ahead of that RFQ to develop the relationship, to differentiate our products, and to make sure we're providing the solutions that are gonna meet the customer's long-term needs. I would say the benefit of this long cycle process is also once we are spec-ed on a platform, we are on that platform for the life of the vehicle, which sometimes is anywhere between five to seven years. Finally, before I hand it over to Matt to talk through the financials, you know what we expect, we would say we are still in early innings of this transformation process.
Our strategic priorities may remain focused on driving improvement of the business, making sure we have the right organization to support that, and very early stages of thinking about M&A for longer term revenue growth, for things that would be complementary to the business that we have today. With that, I'll hand it over to Matthew.
Thanks, thanks, Jen. I'll just review our financial statements. As a reminder for everyone, we are a June 30th fiscal year-end. Our quarterly results that you'll see here are for the quarter ended December 31st. Starting off with sales. From a sales perspective, our business is primarily North American automotive, with about 60% of our sales delivered to an OEM production site in the U.S. and the remainder distributed or sold to Mexico, Canada, Korea and other European countries. On the left-hand side of the slide, you see our sales for the second quarter, which were about $138 million, which was up about 6% on a year-over-year basis. Our performance in the second quarter was better than the market, which was down about 2% for the same period.
In the second quarter, our sales were benefited from favorable sales mix, the impact of pricing that we implemented at the beginning of the calendar year, and new program launches, which have leveled out here over the last several quarters. On the right-hand side of the slide, you see our sales for the last four fiscal years and a steady improvement in our sales over that period, which is about 7% annual growth rate. Our trailing twelve-month sales are $586 million. If we look forward, we'd expect our sales to closely follow North American OEM production schedules, which are estimated to be flattish over the next several years. Next, if we look at our gross margin and our SAE or sales, admin, and engineering expenses.
In the first half of the fiscal year, our gross margin was 16.9%, which was a significant improvement on a year-over-year basis, driven by the pricing actions I mentioned earlier, restructuring benefits, and higher sales volumes. During the second half of fiscal 2025, we implemented restructuring actions, which we see the benefit of about $3 million in our results here, and we also have implemented additional restructuring and a voluntary retirement program here in the first half of fiscal 2026. As Jen mentioned, we have one production facility here in Milwaukee and multiple facilities in Mexico. Therefore, our results or our gross profit is impacted not only by higher labor costs in Mexico, just given government-mandated wage increases, but also because of the foreign currency impact.
As a reminder, a 5% change in the dollar relative to the peso is an approximate $4 million annual impact on our gross margin. When we look at our SAE or sales, admin, and engineering expenses, it's about 11.6% of sales, which includes some one-time costs for the restructuring I mentioned and business transformation activities. On a longer-term basis, we'd expect our SAE to be 10%-11% of sales as we continue to invest in the business. This slide summarizes our results from a net income, earnings per share, and adjusted EBITDA perspective. This slide clearly demonstrates the results the team has driven over the last 12 months and the early efforts of our transformation.
In the first half of the fiscal year, we generated $28 million of adjusted EBITDA, which was a 9.6% EBITDA margin and a little over $3.93 on an earnings per share basis. Next, if we look at our capitalization and liquidity, we have a very solid balance sheet with just shy of $100 million of cash and only $2.5 million of debt, which relates to a revolver for our joint venture. We generated $14 million of cash from operations in the second quarter, bringing our year-to-date cash flow to about $25 million. From a CapEx standpoint, our business is fairly asset light in nature, so our investments are primarily tied to new program launches. Think about CapEx as roughly 2%-2.5% of our sales.
Lastly, just some commentary around our capital priorities. Our first priority are investments to support organic growth and new customer programs. Our second priority is investing in manufacturing modernization initiatives, which we expect to drive efficiencies and improve our overall cost structure. Our third priority is to continue to accumulate cash on the balance sheet and preserve financial flexibility as we navigate the automotive industry. Lastly, on a longer-term basis, we consider M&A, and we're working to develop a framework there. The last slide is just to summarize the Strattec investment rationale. As Jen mentioned, we're in the early innings of a transformation story.
The team has made significant progress over the last 18 months, but there's still a lot of runway to continue to improve the business. Not only are we focused on organic growth, but also on improving our operations to achieve a competitive cost structure. Lastly, we have the benefit of a strong balance sheet and a new and engaged leadership team to help drive this transformational effort.
I think we'll open it up now for Q&A.
Okay. Thank you everybody. If you have a question, you can enter it through the Q&A icon. Some of you may have to hit the More button to see that icon with the three dots, that might make it a little bit easier. With that being said, I'll kick it off here. Jen and Matt, you mentioned the new near-term strategy, the rebranding. What are you looking to get out of the rebranding of the product line or the business, on the near term and on a long-term basis?
What I would say on the near term, John, is Strattec didn't have a lot of recognition within our customer base. Our customers were a little unclear about what we provided, what the value we provided to them across our products. Part of this was to, as we continue to look at building our customer base, being able to have a seamless, coherent story on what products we provide and how we add value to their customers. The second part of it is our cultural transformation, and our employees are such a big part of our delivering success and providing our employees with. We've got a lot of exciting products.
There's a lot of great things that we do, and providing our employees the opportunity to have a stronger vision of what we're doing, what we're trying to achieve, as well as aligning to what the culture pillars are that are gonna be really important to that success. It definitely was multifaceted around being able to deliver a more coherent, strategic view to our customers, as well as delivering a vision and excitement to our employee base.
That's great. You know, brand recognition matters.
Yeah.
Let's move right on to the audience. There seems to be some questions piling up, so I wanna get to them. First question is, "Over the past few years, you've significantly improved gross margins, that's for certain. How much of that improvement is structural versus cyclical, and what level of margins do you believe is sustainable through a normal automotive cycle?
Yeah. I'd say the margin improvement has been through improvements in the base business. If you look at our gross margin, it was 12% in fiscal 2024, 15% in fiscal 2025. If you look at our last two quarters, it's north of 16%. Some of the actions that we've taken are some of the restructuring actions in Mexico, also some automation activities. I think it was kind of the low-hanging fruit from an operational standpoint. When I think about our margins on a longer term basis, we think it's achievable to get to kind of 18%-20% gross margins. A combination of factors there. One is obviously additional volume in our facilities. We do have capacity in our footprint as well as in our equipment to support additional organic growth.
We also have an opportunity on pricing. I mentioned we did some significant pricing at the beginning of calendar 2025. I think going forward, the pricing will be a bit more measured or specific on certain products or customers versus across the board. Just continuous improvements. We continue to have an opportunity to improve our operations and our supply chain and kind of our network.
Let's roll on with the audience questions. In terms of the transformation, what are some of the milestones you hope to achieve in 2026?
Our priorities for 2026 on the transformation is to continue the progress that we've had and shown in the past on our margin improvement to continue to stabilize and modernize the business. We still have quite a bit of work to do on our business, underlying business processes. The third is to continue to lay the groundwork for new customer growth. Again, you know, as I talked through on that slide, that takes time, so we need to make sure we're putting the right prioritization on that to start discussions for the longer term revenue growth.
Along the same lines, and maybe just for what it's worth, let's make it calendar 2026 when we talk about this, how should we think about the remaining investment required for the transformation and the cadence of these costs through the balance of the calendar year?
Yeah. I think the investment in the transformation really comes twofold. One is from a capital standpoint, so we have invested in some new equipment here in Milwaukee, as an example, some additional new die cast equipment. We've also invested in some automation in our Mexico facilities. But the cost of automation has come down. I would say the CapEx requirements are kind of in that 2%-2.5% range for capital that I mentioned earlier. I think we'll probably underspend that in the near term. But there's definitely some opportunity to upgrade our equipment there. Then from an OpEx cost, we don't see that as a significant cost.
You know, if you look at last fiscal year as an example, it was about $1 million-$1.5 million of business transformation costs.
Next question. Can you talk a little bit about your appetite for M&A?
Sure.
What are you thinking about either way?
Yeah, absolutely. Just like I talked about, we're in a long cycle business with our customers. We also understand M&A takes time. The other part of that is sometimes M&A happens for something that you weren't necessarily looking for, it's coming to you. Because we are in the position we are with our balance sheet, you know, we thought it was important for us to at least develop a framework so that we could be prepared if an opportunity came to us that made a lot of sense for our business and was complementary to our business today to facilitate growth. You know, like we said, the reason why we use framework is it is really just about developing that framework.
We are in the early stages of that, but we are keeping an open eye for things that may come up that we wouldn't necessarily be looking for.
Questions are coming fast and furious. Can you talk about the competition in this space?
Yeah, because we have such a diverse product portfolio, our competition is also diverse. You know, there are areas where we are competing against larger automotive suppliers in the space, and what we really look to do is think about how do we differentiate ourselves to provide the flexibility, the nimbleness, because we are a smaller supplier, as well as the opportunities in the technical knowledge from a systems standpoint and really partnering with the customers, where they have a lot of priorities that they're working on, and we're trying to take the need to dive into the areas that, where we provide technical solutions so they can balance their resource prioritization as well.
I think that answers the next question also, so we're gonna jump ahead. Do you look at any markets or industries outside North America? Is that on the plate, or is that still early, too early in your tenure, Jennifer?
Yeah, it's pretty early because we still have some work to do to operationalize the business.
Right.
The easiest place to start is because we have a North America supply chain, and there's a lot of things that are going on that impact supply chains outside of North America, and we still have quite a bit of addressable customers within this market. That's really been our first priority. As I would expand on that, being priority one, I would then look at, you know, where are those customers that, are looking for supply solutions that we provide today that maybe we've built relationships with here in this region. Then you can think about a broader, definition of transportation, into mobility where you think about commercial vehicle, off-road, ag, those segments.
Mm-hmm
Because I do feel that there is transferability for the capabilities that we have today into those segments.
Certainly. I think that kind of also walks into the next question. One person's talking about, asking about, the North American industry being relatively flat and your ability to increase market share. I think you just kind of broadly said, "Listen, we'd look at the commercial vehicle market", but maybe we could also take that to your existing customer base. What's the ability to grab share there?
Yeah, you know, again, I think there are a lot of things that are impacting the supply chain of the customers in the market today that we haven't addressed. It's working with those customers to understand, do they have some challenges? Are they looking for localization opportunities of their supply chain? You know, is there an issue with their existing suppliers that we can help solve? Like I said, you know, we're early stages, but typically, if you look at growth opportunities, while it's a flat market, our addressable part in that market is still pretty low.
It's working through and understanding where we can provide the value to the customers that are in the market today, not necessarily thinking about, okay, this is a high-growth market, because we do have opportunity to provide value to a larger set of customers in the market.
The other thing to keep in mind is just the long sales cycle of the business, right? Jennifer touched on it earlier. Some of the new stuff that we're quoting is, you know, for 2029 and 2030, right? Over the near term, you know, the next two years, it'll be relatively flat.
Yeah
with the market, but there is an opportunity to increase share and to expand kind of our served customers there.
True. That's so true, Matt. Question is, it was highlighted that security and authorization and vehicle access are priority growth areas within the portfolio. Can you discuss expectations for those product lines over the next few years?
Yeah. If I think about security and authorization for vehicle access, that's really primarily with our key fob technology as well as lock cylinders. What I would say is there was a bit of a trend of uncertainty on will key fobs continue to exist? Are there gonna be less lock cylinders in the vehicle? What we've seen is actually a reverse in that trend, where customers who have gone away from key fobs are actually looking to put them back into their offerings because of the consumer feedback. We've also seen some trends happening with concerns about safety in vehicles. If you don't have mechanical locking accessibility, if your battery dies, or if something happens and you can't get in, from a passenger safety standpoint.
I think, you know, again, sticking with the lines of where do we have opportunity to grow, the content in that space isn't necessarily gonna grow, but we think that we can continue to grow with a more diverse set of customers, with the products that we have today.
Question about what have you seen in terms of pricing behavior with your OE and OEM customers as programs renew. Do prices typically hold, improve, or reset?
It depends.
Yes.
Yeah. It definitely depends. What I would say is, you know, in the slide that I went through that talked about the importance of working with customers up front, that is the reason it is important, because the more and more you're just a commodity and responding to an RFQ, I would say it gives the customer more choices, and obviously they're looking to make the most cost-effective vehicle that they can for consumers. You know, it's really a focus for us to work as up front in the value chain as we can with the customers, be able to differentiate ourselves, and offer value. The value can come from many different things as far as, you know, our quality performance, our warranty, the technical differentiation.
You know, it depends on where we're positioned, that specific customer, and what alternatives do they have in the market.
Question about can you provide an update on supply chain conditions?
Well, it's been an exciting thing for Matt and I. I think the whole industry. You know, it's really interesting because if you roll back about a year, everything that we talked about was tariffs. I would say that because of where our operational performance was, that was a really heavy lift for our team to figure out not only how to mitigate tariff exposure, work with customers, but just get the data to understand the calculations of
Right
The tariff impact. You lay on the fact that there have been border closings, there have been, you know, a multitude of things impacting overall supply chain. As we think about our priorities for stabilizing the business, continuing to make sure that we're focused on a stable supply chain and having the capabilities around that is important. We have had expedited freight and inefficiencies in our business because of those supply chain challenges. Matt and I have focused on, you know, having a heavier inventory level to try to help us buffer some of those unexpected supply chain conditions. We are expecting that it will continue to be exciting and a challenging part of our business, and, you know, it's really just making sure we have the resiliency with the team.
We were disappointed when nobody wanted to talk about tariffs to us anymore because we had done so much work on it. We're just expecting this to be a little bit uncertainty continue in our business.
Yeah. I think the key is we just need stability and also to be nimble, right?
Yeah.
'Cause every quarter there's something different, whether it's border crossings, changes in the tariff environment, you know, chip shortages. We just have to manage through those things on a quarterly basis.
Are freight costs becoming problematic or can you pass those through? How does that look right now in your business?
Yeah. Historically, our freight costs have been more driven by our inefficiencies than anything else, and those we can't pass through. That's why we've been focused on reducing that and the levers that we have in our business to reduce it. If there are shortages or things that the industry is facing, not just Strattec, those are obviously things that we can talk to our customers about, and they've been historically recognizing those things like tariff costs. Again, it depends a little bit, is it internally caused or externally caused? Our focus is to make sure we aren't causing anything within our control, and then we can navigate the things that are more industry-wide.
Got it. Nobody asked about the cash, so I'll throw it in as the closing question. I can't believe it.
You would've disappointed me, John, if you didn't ask about the cash.
Wouldn't want to do that, Jen. Go ahead.
Yeah. I mean, we have a little over $100 million of cash on the balance sheet and pretty much no debt. There's a little bit out there on our joint venture, but obviously it's a benefit we have. We don't focus on liquidity and leverage on a daily basis, so we're more focused on the business transformation. We'll continue to generate positive free cash flow. We've got, you know, our short-term priorities, and then also longer term we'll consider M&A.
Okay. All right. Any closing remarks?
Nope. Appreciate the time today. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you both and have a great remainder of your conference. We appreciate you being here today.
Yeah. Thank you, John.
Thanks.