Skip to footer

Lumber Liquidators (LL) stock plummets after CBS report

Lumber Liquidators sold flooring with higher levels of formaldehyde than permitted under California's health and safety standards, according to '60 Minutes.' Lumber Liquidators stock had fallen 24.8 percent before the market opened Monday morning.

|
Rick Wilking/Reuters/File
A customer enters the Lumber Liquidators store in Denver last month. Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc, a retailer of hardwood flooring in North America, sold flooring with higher levels of formaldehyde than permitted under California's health and safety standards, according to teh CBS news program '60 Minutes.'
  • By Staff Reuters

Trading for Lumber Liquidators, the discount flooring company, was halted Monday after its shares dropped more than 20 percent following a CBS report that the company sold flooring with higher levels of formaldehyde than permitted under California's health and safety standards.

The trading was halted for pending news. The stock plunged 24.8 percent before the market opened Monday morning.

Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc, a retailer of hardwood flooring in North America, sold flooring with higher levels of formaldehyde than permitted under California's health and safety standards, according to television news program "60 Minutes."

CBS's "60 Minutes" said it tested Lumber Liquidators' flooring in Virginia, Florida, Texas, Illinois and New York for levels of formaldehyde.

"Out of the 31 samples of Chinese-made laminate flooring, only one was compliant with formaldehyde emissions standards. Some were more than 13x over the California limit," according to CBS. 

Lumber Liquidators said it complies with applicable regulations regarding its products, including California standards for formaldehyde emissions.

"These attacks are driven by a small group of short-selling investors who are working together for the sole purpose of making money by lowering our stock price," the company said in a statement.

Lumber Liquidators' shares plunged as much as 24 percent last week after Chief Executive Robert Lynch said CBS's "60 minutes" news program will feature the company in an "unfavorable light with regard to sourcing and product quality, specifically related to laminates."

"We will vigorously challenge any false allegations or incorrect presentations," Lynch said on an earnings call with analysts last week.

Lumber Liquidators also said the U.S. Department of Justice may seek criminal charges against the company under an Act aimed at curbing illegal harvest of tropical hardwoods.

The CBS "60 Minutes" news program was aired on March 1. (Reporting by Supriya Kurane in Bengaluru; Editing by Anupama Dwivedi)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Lumber Liquidators (LL) stock plummets after CBS report
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2015/0302/Lumber-Liquidators-LL-stock-plummets-after-CBS-report
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe