This paper investigates the modal properties of semiconductor lasers operating in the strong-feedback regime. Analytical expressions are developed based on an iterative travelling-wave model, which enable a complete and quantitative description of a compound cavity mode in its steady state. Additional information is provided about the physical inside into a compound laser system, such as a bifurcation diagram of the compound cavity modes for full variation range (from 0 to 1) of the external reflection coefficient and a more general shape for the diagram of photon density versus mode phase - this latter will reduce to the classical "ellipse" in the weak-feedback regime. It is shown that in the strong-feedback regime, a feedback laser is characterized by a small mode number and a high density of photons. This behavior confirms previous experimental observations, showing that beyond the coherence-collapse regime, the compound laser system could be re-stabilized, and that as a result power-enhanced low-noise stable laser operation with quasi-uniform pulsation is possible with external-mirror reflectivity close to 1. Moreover, it is also shown that for a compound system operating in the strong-feedback regime, an anti-reflection treatment of a laser can significantly reduce its current threshold, and that in the absence of this treatment excitation of a minimum-linewidth mode with higher output power would be possible inside such a system. Finally, it is shown that in the weak-feedback regime except for a phase shift the iterative travelling-wave model will reduce to the Lang-Kobayashi model in cases where the product of the feedback rate and the internal round-trip time is much less than unity (that would mean in situations of as-cleaved lasers).