Retail

2% to 3% growth feels perpetual: Wal-Mart CEO

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Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon told CNBC on Wednesday the U.S. economy does not seem to be picking up that much stream.

"This 2 percent to 3 percent growth range number just feels like it's kind of perpetual," he said on "Squawk Box" from the Business Roundtable meeting in Washington, D.C. "We're kind of like we were last year year. And as I look ahead to next year, it feels like more of the same."

Lower gasoline prices are helping retailers and Wal-Mart in particular, McMillon said, but he noted consumers are facing headwinds, too. "They've got a health-care bill to pay. They need to pay down some debt."

Many Americans are trying to stretch their finances to the next pay check, he added. "We still see the pay cycle play out where the first of the month demand goes up and our sales are better."

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Mobile shopping revolutionizing retail

But while challenges exist, the explosion of e-commerce has created a revolution in retailing, McMillon said, with 10 percent of mobile orders coming from shoppers actually in Walmart stores.

"They're in the store. Either we're out of stock unfortunately or there's something that they want that we don't have in our assortment and they just buy it right then," he continued, "and get it delivered to the store later or have it delivered to their house."

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Wal-Mart said its online sales broke the retailer's records, with more than 1.5 billion pages viewed on Walmart.com between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday.

Mobile sales accounted for about 70 percent of that traffic, a "dramatic increase" from last year, McMillon said.

Same-day pickups at Walmarts set records as well, with orders up 70 percent from the same period last year. People are very interested in picking up orders at stores, he said.

Online security a 'daily battle'

With the hacking attack against Sony this month and the breach at Target during last year's holiday shopping season, Wal-Mart takes data protection very seriously, McMillon said.

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Online security to protect consumer data is a "daily battle" with hacking attacks happening all the time, he added. It's a budget line he said he doesn't put too much pressure on.

"Trust is the Number 1 asset that we have, whether it's how we protect our data or the prices we sell to them at," he said.