Lowe's Shrugs Off Negative Seeking Alpha Article

Shares of Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE: LOW) traded as low as $67.60 Friday morning, only to rebound and move higher as investors shrugged off a report by Xuhua Zhou on Seeking Alpha that accused the company of being guilty of formaldehyde noncompliance in sourcing laminate flooring from China.The author is attributed as being one of (if not the first) to raise awareness over Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc (NYSE: LL) and its alleged selling of products with illegal levels of formaldehyde in a Seeking Alpha article published in June 2013.Zhou is short Lowe's shares. Shares traded recently at $69.97, up 1.6 percent.In Zhou's latest report, the author noted a number of industry sources familiar with the business practice reached out and shared their suspicion that Lowe's may be selling similarly problematic products as Lumber Liquidators.One of Zhou's sources, "Larry," sourced "FH/L 3603 Chocolate Cherry Hickory" from Lowe's and sent it to Benchmark International, one of the independent labs used by 60 Minutes to test Lumber Liquidators' products. The author said that Benchmark commented that the "sample does not pass published CARB Phase 2 standard as the product scored approximately 10 times the threshold. The results from Lowe's were 1.134 ppm. The CARB 2 threshold is 0.11 ppm."Moreover, a Benchmark employee told "Larry" that "I would be very concerned about the results from the one test from your supplier." "To put Lowe's results in context, "60 Minutes" tested 31 samples from Lumber Liquidators and Lowe's Chocolate Cherry Hickory would have been the third worst of all 31 samples had it been included by "60 Minutes", Zhou concluded. "Only two samples from Lumber Liquidators were worse."