Investors closely track the portfolios of leading market participants on Dalal Street. In this context, ETMarkets analysed the investment holdings of veteran investor Sunil Singhania’s Abakkus Asset Manager, a prominent Indian investment firm. Based on the latest shareholding data for the March 2026 quarter, Abakkus holds stakes in nearly 32 listed companies, with a combined portfolio value of around Rs 2,742 crore as of May 29, 2026. This represents an increase of approximately 6% from Rs 2,577 crore reported at the end of December 2025. The analysis includes only those companies in which the investor holds more than a 1% stake and may not represent the entirety of the portfolio.

A closer look at the portfolio’s CY26 performance reveals that a majority of the stocks have delivered negative returns. Among them, seven stocks have declined by more than 20% in the first five months of the year. On the other hand, a handful of holdings have emerged as strong performers. We highlight the top six gainers in the portfolio, which have rallied between 20% and 75% so far in CY26. The portfolio also witnessed six new additions during the March 2026 quarter. (Data Source: ACE Equity, Trendlyne).

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Moderna, Inc. (MRNA) Bernstein 42nd Annual Strategic Decisions Conference May 28, 2026 10:00 AM EDT

Company Participants

Stéphane Bancel – CEO & Director

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Conference Call Participants

Courtney Breen – Bernstein Institutional Services LLC, Research Division

Presentation

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Courtney Breen
Bernstein Institutional Services LLC, Research Division

Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for this conversation about Moderna. My name is Courtney Breen. I am the U.S. pharma analyst here at Bernstein. And it is my privilege to have Stephane Bancel here with me, the CEO and Chairman of Moderna. He’s been in this role for a decent amount of time as well and has seen Moderna through the ages and through the different eras of the company. So I’m really excited to kind of have an opportunity to dive into kind of Moderna today, where Moderna has come from and where Moderna might be going in the future.

I also know that AI is a super important topic for all investors these days. So we’ll be hoping to touch on kind of the impact and potential of AI and drug discovery and kind of in operating some of these businesses. But I do also want to remind you that if there are other topics that I’m not planning on covering that you’d love to have covered in this conversation, please do send them through the Pigeonhole app. You’ll find a QR code to be able to send them through. I’ll receive them up here and can integrate them into the conversation. So we want to make this as relevant and as impactful for everyone that’s here.

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Question-and-Answer Session

Courtney Breen
Bernstein Institutional Services LLC, Research Division

But without further ado, Stephane, again, thank you so much for joining us here today. As I mentioned, you’ve been leading Moderna for a while, I think, since 2011. It

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Therrian Fontenot is a former football athlete whose career has been built on discipline, resilience, and leadership.

Born in Louisiana and raised in Los Angeles, California, he developed a strong competitive mindset at an early age through sport. He attended Leuzinger High School, where he became known for his performance on the football field and graduated in 2000.

His success in high school earned him a full scholarship to Fresno State, where he competed at the collegiate level against some of the top athletes in the country. During his time there, Fontenot learned the importance of consistency, preparation, and accountability. He later made the decision to leave college early to pursue a professional football career, gaining experience in a highly competitive environment that demanded focus and mental toughness.

Throughout his journey, football remained more than just a career path. It became the foundation for the way he approaches life, leadership, and personal growth. Today, Fontenot continues to apply those lessons through fitness, discipline, and community involvement.

He is currently focused on developing Help2Others, an emerging charitable initiative centred on encouragement, personal growth, and giving back to others. Alongside his work in the community, he remains active through weight training and golf.

Fontenot’s story reflects perseverance, structure, and the belief that consistent effort creates long-term opportunities.

Q&A With Former Football Athlete Therrian Fontenot

Q: Let’s start at the beginning. What was life like growing up?

Therrian Fontenot:
I was born in Louisiana, but moving to Los Angeles really shaped my life. Growing up there taught me how competitive the world could be. Football became a major part of my identity early on. It gave me structure and something positive to focus on.

Q: When did you realise football could take you further?

Therrian Fontenot:
Probably during high school at Leuzinger. That’s when things became more serious. I started understanding that football could create opportunities for me beyond just playing the game. I worked hard every day because I knew scholarships were possible.

Q: What do you remember most about your time at Leuzinger High School?

Therrian Fontenot:
The discipline. The coaches expected a lot from us. You had to show up prepared. It wasn’t only about talent. It was about consistency and effort. Those lessons stayed with me long after high school ended.

Q: You earned a full scholarship to Fresno State. What did that achievement mean to you?

Therrian Fontenot:
It meant everything. Coming from where I came from, earning a full scholarship showed me that hard work really matters. Fresno State gave me the chance to compete at a high level and challenge myself against great athletes.

Q: How did college football change your mindset?

Therrian Fontenot:
College football teaches you accountability very quickly. Everybody was talented, so the difference came down to discipline and preparation. You learn how to manage pressure and expectations. That environment helped me mature.

Q: You eventually left college early to pursue professional football. What went into that decision?

Therrian Fontenot:
I believed I was ready for the next level. It was a difficult decision, but I wanted to pursue the opportunity while I had the chance. Playing professionally, even for a short time, taught me a lot about focus and resilience.

Q: What lessons from football still apply to your life today?

Therrian Fontenot:
The biggest one is consistency. Success doesn’t happen overnight. Football taught me that showing up every day matters, even when things get difficult. It also taught me how important teamwork is. Nobody succeeds alone.

Q: How would you describe your approach to leadership?

Therrian Fontenot:
Leadership starts with example. People pay attention to actions more than words. Whether it’s fitness, work ethic or helping others, I believe you have to stay disciplined yourself before you can guide anybody else.

Q: You remain very focused on fitness. Why is that important to you?

Therrian Fontenot:
Fitness keeps me mentally sharp and grounded. Weight training has always been part of my life. It helps me stay focused and maintain structure in my daily routine. Golf has also become something I enjoy because it teaches patience and concentration in a completely different way.

Q: Tell us about Help2Others.

Therrian Fontenot:
Help2Others is something I’m building because I want to give back. It’s still early, but the idea is simple. I want to encourage people, especially younger people, to stay disciplined, believe in themselves and keep pushing forward no matter what challenges they face.

Q: Why is mentorship and guidance important to you now?

Therrian Fontenot:
Because I know how much influence the right environment can have. Sports gave me direction. Not everybody has that structure in their life. If I can help somebody stay motivated or focused, that matters to me.

Q: What do you want people to take away from your story?

Therrian Fontenot:
I want people to understand that growth takes effort. There will always be setbacks, but discipline and consistency can carry you a long way. You have to keep moving forward and keep working on yourself.

For many UK growing businesses, using spreadsheets is such an integral part of running a company is like using that noisy kettle that still works.

It’s what we always did, so why change? They are trusted, inexpensive (in the short term), and simple. You can fit everything onto one doc, with employee info on one tab, sick leave on another, expenses in a third, and their hours and salary on tabs beginning after “Sheet 1” (usually only fully understandable by one super user).

For a while, it seems like a perfect system. Then the business hires 10 more employees. One employee works from another location. A boss forgets to fill in a vacation planner. Unbeknownst to everyone, the once thought-up efficient plan is slowly doubling, as well as tripling, to add to time, money, and irritation.

The issue is not the spreadsheet, per se. The problem is that the company grows so big, spreadsheets are just too small on their own to contain it.

The Productivity Drain Nobody Notices

Manual HR doesn’t really fall over. It just slowly pours away your company’s margin every day.

Managers hunting down signed documents, updating the 5 locations where they keep employee records, and checking whether the “latest” version of a spreadsheet is actually the latest. HR admins are doing the same weekly manual tasks: copying data, approving leave requests from chain emails, and calculating absence values in a spreadsheet.

On their own, these little tasks don’t seem like much. Added up, they’re a tidy sum.

A growing company might be burning through dozens of hours every month on tasks like maintaining manual processes that should long since have been automated. All that time could be spent by managers on developing their staff, operational improvements, growth, or really anything other than knowing how to track down that contract the vendor sent a while ago that is almost definitely in the Generally Important Stuff 2019_Q3 folder titled “FINAL_v2_UPDATED” on the general drive.

But, most notably, as companies scale, inefficient manual processes compound. When a team is eight, maintaining a process may work fine, but by the time a company gets to 50 employees, it’s a frustrating mess.

Human Error Becomes a Business Risk

Spreadsheets are labour-intensive and are therefore prone to human error.

An out-of-date phone number may not seem serious until you need an emergency contact. A double entry in the payroll may provide uncomfortable conversations and headaches for the accountants. An incorrect holiday day entered in a spreadsheet can damage employee trust much faster than you may think.

The biggest problem is that unconnected systems introduce inconsistencies. A spreadsheet says an employee has completed the required training. Another sheet says they haven’t. One manager updates a record while the other keeps using the file they saved to their desktop three weeks ago.

This isn’t due to carelessness. This is what happens when there’s too much room for error.

Compliance Problems Can Escalate Quickly

Problems can grow quickly from bad to worse

Storing a few contracts in a shared drive just isn’t good enough.

You also need to keep on top of your employee files, manage right-to-work checks, make sure you’re tracking absence procedures, and keep sensitive data safe. If this information is spread out over a few spreadsheets, emails, and a couple of random systems, maintaining good compliance practices is going to be confusing at best.

Where documents are missing or records aren’t being generated, businesses open themselves up to unnecessary legal and financial risks. Even the smallest oversight can expand to cause real issues during audits, claims or disputes.

It’s another reason why businesses reach a point when manual processes quickly get out of hand, and they decide to look for dedicated UK HR software to manage.

That solution allows firms to centralise their records, automate reminders, and ensure that important documents aren’t getting buried in the depths of a filing cabinet.

Employees Notice More Than Businesses Think

Old, paper-based HR systems have a bigger impact on the employee experience than many leaders believe.

They see that their leave request has taken two days to approve because the right spreadsheet was buried three tabs down. They see when others’ induction processes are ad-hoc. They see themselves waiting three days for a response from HR. They see managers asking for information they already supplied for the second time.

These may sound like minor complaints, but they reflect the way employees perceive their employers. A company that isn’t buttoned up in its operational processes will have a hard time projecting external credibility.

In markets with healthy competition for talent, the operational efficiency of an organisation plays a significant role in effective employer branding. Workers now have an expectation that things will operate smoothly in a workplace, especially as many workplaces tout themselves as forward-thinking, corporate-minded or on a very aggressive growth trajectory.

Technology Creates Room for Growth

HR software is seen as a grudge purchase that businesses can get by without for now, but it’s an outlay that pays off in terms of efficiency and future growth.

Modern platforms cut out the busywork, reduce human error, ensure compliance with automatically enforced policies and shared digital records, and remove time-consuming HR headaches when you scale.

Spreadsheets have value, but relying on them entirely for HR often leads to creeping costs that go unnoticed for far too long.

The ET Alpha Wealth Summit is set to take place on June 4 in Mumbai, where investors, market experts, and analysts will gather to discuss economic implications, opportunities, and market strategies, as well as the do’s and don’ts of market trading, in this one-of-a-kind event.

In a rapidly evolving financial markets landscape, the opportunities for market outperformance seem to be disappearing. However, the Alpha isn’t dead just yet, but is in fact, hiding in fewer, harder-to-find places.

In a market environment where it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the Alpha, there is a need for careful evaluation of the conditions and pre-requisite factors that influence the decision-making process behind the right investment.

The session, ‘Is Alpha Dead? Or Just Harder to Find?’ will explore how one can identify where real outperformance still exists. The discussion will also focus on how to identify and avoid crowded, low-return trades, in retrospect of generating consistent excess value.

This panel will consist of leading industry experts such as Vikas Khemani, Devina Mehra, Prateek Agrawal and Kalpen Parekh, who will share their views and opinions regarding the subject. The Alpha isn’t gone; it’s just hiding in harder-to-find places, and through this insightful panel discussion, these ‘places’ will become clearer to identify.

Following this discussion will be a fireside chat with Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO, Edelweiss Mutual Fund. The session, ‘How to Build a ₹100 Cr Portfolio in a 10–12% World’, breaks down how to realistically build and compound a Rs 100 crore portfolio, through sharper allocation, disciplined risk, and avoiding the crowded trades that dilute returns.
In a market where easy gains are gone, it takes a broader mindset to understand the intricacies in building a portfolio that could compound to Rs 100 crore. The session will explore strategies for building long-term wealth and scaling one’s portfolio towards the Rs 100 crore milestone.These sessions will include practical takeaways on uncovering hidden sources of alpha, navigating crowded trades, and positioning portfolios for sustainable long-term returns in an increasingly complex investment landscape.