Brian Phelps

Canadian on Manitoulin Island who Tweets about: Bruins, Sports, Music, Random thoughts, funny banter. In my own mind I am Hilarious! 🦍💎🙌

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

@27MilanLucic Congrats Looch!

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

Have a night Marner!

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

Love watching this kid play

[Boston Bruins @NHLBruins]

Season Rewind: Fraser Minten’s rookie campaign.

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

Happy May 24!

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

They're not lying

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

I've watched @LetterkennyProb over and over countless times. Only tonight did I recognize @dsbttv_potamkin aka Rush Rancid. I first saw him wrestle in Little Current last year and picked up a 8x10 because he was my fav guy on the card that night.

[Fake Mark Carney @MarkCarney_Ego]

My retarded government is grounding the iconic Canadian Snowbirds!

This demonstration team has been flying since the 60s, but all it took was one year with me in power to destroy them.

Canadians do not need inspiration. Canadians do not need national pride.

I see the military as a liability, and I don't care that I'm destroying this iconic, legendary element of Canadian unity.

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

DAMN

[90s WWE @90sWWE]

Happy Birthday to Ron Simmons!

[Ethan Brooks @alt_w_v_g]

You used to sell stuff on eBay.

Maybe an old camera. Maybe Beanie Babies. Maybe a coat that didn't fit.

You paid a small fee. The buyer got the thing. Everyone went home.

That eBay is gone.

The website looks the same. The logo is the same. The 135 million buyers are still there.

But the company isn't really a marketplace anymore.

It is an advertising business with a marketplace attached for distribution.

Last year, sellers paid eBay $2 billion just to make sure their own listings showed up.

Read that again.

The board calls this growth.

A Canadian who runs a video game store called it something else.

Here is what actually happened.

In 2020 the board hired a new CEO. His name is Jamie Iannone. He arrived with a strategy called focused categories.

In plain English, that means leaning into the stuff people pay extra for. Sneakers. Watches. Trading cards. Auto parts.

The everyday seller, the person with the camera and the coat, was no longer the customer.

The customer was now the seller who would pay to be seen.

In 2025 eBay did $80 billion in transactions. They kept $11 billion of that as revenue. Of that $11 billion, $2 billion came from advertising.

Sellers paid them $2 billion to promote listings on a website those sellers already pay fees to use.

That is the growth story.

In the same year, the number of enthusiast buyers, eBay's own term for their best customers, was 16 million.

It was also 16 million the year before.

And the year before that.

And the year before that.

Four years. Zero growth. They mention this on every earnings call without mentioning it.

So what does a company do when growth stops?

It buys back its own stock.

In 2025, eBay returned over $3 billion to shareholders. Most of that was buybacks. In February the board authorized another $2 billion on top.

Buybacks shrink the share count. Earnings per share goes up even when earnings stay flat. The stock price follows.

The stock was $68 a year ago. It is $108 today.

The company did not improve. The denominator got smaller.

Then a man from Canada noticed.

His name is Ryan Cohen. He runs GameStop. He started his career selling pet food online and sold it to PetSmart for $3.35 billion.

He looked at eBay. 135 million buyers. $80 billion in transactions. Real margins. Real cash flow. A board harvesting the business instead of running it.

He bought 5% of the company through derivatives and stock.

Then on May 4, he offered to buy the rest. $125 per share. $56 billion total.

On May 12, the eBay board rejected the bid. They called it not credible.

The math is credible.

What the board means by not credible is we would have to explain why we sold.

Then Cohen went on Piers Morgan.

He said eBay is run by a bunch of losers with perverse financial incentives.

He pointed out that eBay's CEO has been paid $144 million over six years.

He pointed out that he personally takes no salary and has put $128 million of his own money into the company he runs.

You do not have to like Ryan Cohen to notice he is making a point that is hard to argue with.

eBay used to be a place where regular people sold things to other regular people.

Now it is a $48 billion company whose largest growth driver is charging its own sellers to advertise to a buyer base that stopped growing four years ago, while spending billions a year buying its own stock to make the chart go up.

The board calls this strategy.

A video game CEO from Canada called it what it is.

The market is now waiting to see who else agrees.

Plz fix. Thx.

Sent from my iPhone

[Anthony Pompliano 🌪 @APompliano]

FULL INTERVIEW: @ryancohen explains his plan to acquire eBay.

He unpacks his pitch to institutional investors, why eBay is so horribly run, and how Ryan plans to create billion in shareholder value.

$GME $EBAY

[Ryan Cohen @ryancohen]

I have been suspended from eBay

[Fake Mark Carney @MarkCarney_Ego]

Good news, I just gave another $270-MILLION Canadian taxpayer dollars to Ukraine!

Canadians can't afford food, gas, or homes.

We have a shortage of hospitals and schools, and our infrastructure is crumbling.

But I don't really care about Canada, I'm a globalist puppet.

[Ryan Cohen @ryancohen]

Proposal to acquire eBay.
https://t.co/FwjcxbDmyt

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

@MrBeast $100 and I'll unlike right now

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

Thanks for the ride @NHLBruins

See you next year

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

Pasta is the best

[Jackie Redmond @Jackie_Redmond]

Saw Pasta post-game and said breakaway in OT, what’s going through the head of David Pastrnak as you take the shot ?

Pasta: “simple. Just please go in, so I can go home”

Then he high fived me. lol.

#Bruins #NHLonTNT

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

🍝

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

Anyone at @FM96Rocks want to play some Dropkick Murphys - Shipping Up To Boston for ol' times sake...?

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

The kid is going to be alright

[Boston Bruins @NHLBruins]

What a season for 9️⃣3️⃣

#NHLBruins | @NESN

[Brian Phelps @phelpsbj]

I really hope the @NHLBruins relay the news

[Strombone @strombone1]

Who’s gonna tell him???