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The free version of ChatGPT may provide inaccurate or incomplete responses — or no answer at all — to medication-related questions, according to research by pharmacists at Long Island University.
The study demonstrates that patients and health-care professionals should be cautious about relying on OpenAI’s viral chatbot for drug information and verify any of the responses with trusted sources, the study’s lead author said.
ChatGPT was widely seen as the fastest-growing consumer internet app of all time following its launch roughly a year ago, ushering in a breakout year for artificial intelligence.

Harun Ozalp | Anadolu | Getty Images

The free version of ChatGPT may provide inaccurate or incomplete responses — or no answer at all — to questions related to medications, which could potentially endanger patients who use OpenAI’s viral chatbot, a new study released Tuesday suggests.
Pharmacists at Long Island University who posed 39 questions to the free ChatGPT in May deemed that only 10 of the chatbot’s responses were “satisfactory” based on criteria they established. ChatGPT’s responses to the 29 other drug-related questions did not directly address the question asked, or were inaccurate, incomplete or both, the study said. 

The study indicates that patients and health-care professionals should be cautious about relying on ChatGPT for drug information and verify any of the responses from the chatbot with trusted sources, according to lead author Sara Grossman, an associate professor of pharmacy practice at LIU. For patients, that can be their doctor or a government-based medication information website such as the National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus, she said.
Grossman said the research did not require any funding.
ChatGPT was widely seen as the fastest-growing consumer internet app of all time following its launch roughly a year ago, which ushered in a breakout year for artificial intelligence. But along the way, the chatbot has also raised concerns about issues including fraud, intellectual property, discrimination and misinformation. 
Several studies have highlighted similar instances of erroneous responses from ChatGPT, and the Federal Trade Commission in July opened an investigation into the chatbot’s accuracy and consumer protections. 
In October, ChatGPT drew around 1.7 billion visits worldwide, according to one analysis. There is no data on how many users ask medical questions of the chatbot.

Notably, the free version of ChatGPT is limited to using data sets through September 2021 — meaning it could lack significant information in the rapidly changing medical landscape. It’s unclear how accurately the paid versions of ChatGPT, which began to use real-time internet browsing earlier this year, can now answer medication-related questions.  
Grossman acknowledged there’s a chance that a paid version of ChatGPT would have produced better study results. But she said that the research focused on the free version of the chatbot to replicate what more of the general population uses and can access. 
She added that the study provided only “one snapshot” of the chatbot’s performance from earlier this year. It’s possible that the free version of ChatGPT has improved and may produce better results if the researchers conducted a similar study now, she added.

ChatGPT study results

The study used real questions posed to Long Island University’s College of Pharmacy drug information service from January 2022 to April of this year. 
In May, pharmacists researched and answered 45 questions, which were then reviewed by a second researcher and used as the standard for accuracy against ChatGPT. Researchers excluded six questions because there was no literature available to provide a data-driven response. 
ChatGPT did not directly address 11 questions, according to the study. The chatbot also gave inaccurate responses to 10 questions, and wrong or incomplete answers to another 12. 
For each question, researchers asked ChatGPT to provide references in its response so that the information provided could be verified. However, the chatbot provided references in only eight responses, and each included sources that don’t exist.
One question asked ChatGPT about whether a drug interaction — or when one medication interferes with the effect of another when taken together — exists between Pfizer’s Covid antiviral pill Paxlovid and the blood-pressure-lowering medication verapamil.
ChatGPT indicated that no interactions had been reported for that combination of drugs. In reality, those medications have the potential to excessively lower blood pressure when taken together.  
“Without knowledge of this interaction, a patient may suffer from an unwanted and preventable side effect,” Grossman said. 
Grossman noted that U.S. regulators first authorized Paxlovid in December 2021. That’s a few months before the September 2021 data cutoff for the free version of ChatGPT, which means the chatbot has access to limited information on the drug. 
Still, Grossman called that a concern. Many Paxlovid users may not know the data is out of date, which leaves them vulnerable to receiving inaccurate information from ChatGPT. 
Another question asked ChatGPT how to convert doses between two different forms of the drug baclofen, which can treat muscle spasms. The first form was intrathecal, or when medication is injected directly into the spine, and the second form was oral. 
Grossman said her team found that there is no established conversion between the two forms of the drug and it differed in the various published cases they examined. She said it is “not a simple question.” 
But ChatGPT provided only one method for the dose conversion in response, which was not supported by evidence, along with an example of how to that conversion. Grossman said the example had a serious error: ChatGPT incorrectly displayed the intrathecal dose in milligrams instead of micrograms
Any health-care professional who follows that example to determine an appropriate dose conversion “would end up with a dose that’s 1,000 times less than it should be,” Grossman said. 
She added that patients who receive a far smaller dose of the medicine than they should be getting could experience a withdrawal effect, which can involve hallucinations and seizures More

A FEW YEARS ago renewables were having their moment in the sun (and wind). Rock-bottom interest rates lowered the cost of clean power, which is expensive to deploy but runs on sun and wind that come free of charge. The price of solar panels and wind turbines fell as technologies matured and manufacturers gained scale. These developments brought the levelised cost of electricity (LCoE)—which accounts for capital and operating expenditures per unit of energy—for solar, onshore wind and offshore wind down by 87%, 64% and 55%, respectively, between 2010 and 2020 (see chart 1). Clean energy became competitive with dirty alternatives, and was snapped up by big corporate power-users directly from developers.image: The EconomistInfrastructure investors such as Brookfield and Macquarie made big renewables bets. So did some fossil-fuel firms, such as BP. Utilities such as EDP and Iberdrola in Europe and AES and NextEra in America poured money into projects. Average returns on capital put to work by developers rose from 3% in 2015 to 6% in 2019, a similar level to oil-and-gas extraction but with less volatility. The industry’s prospects looked so bright that in October 2020 the market value of NextEra briefly eclipsed that of ExxonMobil, America’s mightiest oil giant, making it America’s most valuable energy company.image: The EconomistToday these prospects look considerably dimmer. Over the past two years the economics of renewables have been hit by rising interest rates, supply-chain snags, permitting delays and, increasingly, the protectionist instincts of Western governments. The “green premium” in stocks has turned into a “green discount”. The S&P Global Clean Energy Index, which tracks the performance of the industry, has declined by 32% over the past 12 months, even as the world’s stockmarkets are up by 11% (see chart 2). AES has lost more than a third of its value. NextEra is worth roughly a third as much as ExxonMobil, which has been buoyed by a surge in the oil price. Manufacturers of wind turbines went from just about profitable to lossmaking (see chart 3).image: The EconomistThat is a problem, and not just for the renewables companies and their shareholders. On December 2nd, at the annual UN climate summit being held in Dubai, 118 countries pledged to increase their combined renewable-energy capacity to 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, up from 3,400GW last year, as part of their decarbonisation efforts. That will require adding some 1,000GW a year, three times what the world managed last year. For this to happen, renewables must once again look like a business to bet on.The industry’s recent troubles are the result of a confluence of factors. One problem is rising costs along the supply chain. The price of polysilicon, a key material in solar panels, rocketed from $10 per kilogram in 2020 to as much as $35 in 2022, thanks to pandemic-era supply-chain issues in China. The price of solar modules jumped in response.Costs related to wind turbines have soared, too. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed up the prices of steel, an important input of which both countries are large producers. What is more, to create longer and more powerful blades, manufacturers have pushed into new frontiers with the technology, including experimenting with materials like carbon-fibre composites rather than fibreglass. To capture stronger winds at bigger heights, the average tower now stands at almost 100 metres tall. In 2018 GE unveiled a 260-metre offshore wind turbine, not much shorter than the Eiffel Tower. Suppliers of the 8,000-odd parts in a wind turbine have struggled to keep up. Ships and lorries are having trouble transporting parts the size of football fields.All this has led to delays and manufacturing failures for wind turbines. In October a turbine made by Vestas, a Danish firm, caught fire in Iowa. Around the same time the blades on a GE turbine in Germany snapped and fell into a field. Warranty provisions in sales contracts make manufacturers bear the cost of such incidents. In the past 12 months such warranties cost Vestas €1.1bn ($1.2bn). Quality problems at Siemens Gamesa, including creases in its blades, drove annual operating losses for its parent company, Siemens Energy, to €4.6bn. On November 14th it was granted a loan guarantee by the German government to help it avert a crisis.To stem the bleeding, equipment-makers have been raising their own prices. Western ones now charge a fifth more than they did at the end of 2020, according to S&P Global, a data provider. These price rises have combined with higher interest rates to push up the LCoE for American offshore-wind projects by 50% over the past two years, calculates BloombergNEF, a research firm—even after including subsidies wrapped up in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s mammoth climate law.Developers that locked in electricity prices with customers before locking in costs have found themselves stuck with unprofitable projects. In America they have either cancelled or sought to renegotiate contracts for half of the offshore-wind capacity being built in the country, according to BloombergNEF. In October Orsted, a Danish firm that is the world’s largest offshore-wind developer, took a $4bn writedown when it cancelled two large projects off the coast of New Jersey. In Britain, a government auction in September to provide offshore wind power to the grid at a maximum guaranteed price of £44 ($56) per megawatt-hour (MWh) received no bids.Renewables bosses also grumble about bureaucratic delays. In America it takes on average four years to get approval for a solar farm and six for an onshore wind one. An EU rule that permitting times for renewable projects in the bloc should not exceed two years is honoured mostly in the breach. Because solar and wind farms typically produce less energy than conventional power plants and, with easy-to-connect sites already taken, are being built in increasingly remote locations, they often need new transmission lines. These, too, need to be approved. In America the interconnection queue for renewable energy is 2,000GW long and growing.All this is made worse by rising green protectionism. America has in effect locked out Chinese solar manufacturers with hefty anti-dumping duties and the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act of 2021, which bars American developers from importing modules containing polysilicon from the Xinjiang region, source of half of the global supply. As a result of such policies, solar modules are more than twice as expensive in the country as elsewhere, according to Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy.Those costs may rise further. In August the Department of Commerce found that some South-East Asian suppliers were merely repackaging products from China, and would thus also be slapped with the same anti-dumping duties from the middle of next year. The Biden administration is using the IRA’s domestic-content requirements to lure production home. First Solar, the biggest American maker of modules, is expanding its domestic production capacity from 6GW this year to 14GW by 2026. Yet that is a tiny fraction of what America will need to meet its decarbonisation goals. It will also do little to lower prices in the industry as a whole.image: The EconomistEurope is sending mixed signals. The EU has dropped earlier anti-dumping duties on Chinese solar panels. But on November 22nd the European Parliament passed the Net Zero Industry Act, which will introduce minimum domestic-content levels for public renewable-energy contracts. The European Commission is also mulling a probe into China’s subsidies for its turbine manufacturers, which sell their gear for 70% less at home than what Western rivals charge elsewhere in the world (see chart 4). Chinese firms are already gaining traction outside their home market. They are now bidding more regularly on projects around the world, notes Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade, chief executive of EDP.Trade restrictions will not just keep out cheap Chinese solar panels and wind turbines. They will also affect the availability of parts. Siemens Gamesa plans to outsource more of its supply chain to trim costs. Western turbine manufacturers already purchase nacelles, towers and other components from China, which dominates their production. For offshore-wind projects America will need to import the majority of components to meet its 2030 targets, according to the Department of Energy. Supply shortages are likely as the world races to deploy more renewable power. Tariffs and local content regulations could make the problem worse.There are few signs of the protectionist mood lifting. But the industry is at least starting to get a grip on some more immediate challenges. Polysilicon prices have fallen and production capacity is increasing up and down the solar supply chain. Western turbine manufacturers may be turning a corner, too, helped by a fall in commodity prices and greater technological and financial discipline. The industry is realising that “bigger is not always better” for turbines, says Henrik Andersen, chief executive of Vestas. On November 8th the Danish firm reported that it returned to profitability in the third quarter.image: The EconomistDevelopers, for their part, are managing to raise prices without hurting demand. In the past two years prices for solar and wind power received by developers in America under power-purchase agreements have risen by nearly 60%, according to figures from LevelTen Energy, an energy marketplace (see chart 5). Andres Gluski, boss of AES, says that his company is on track to put more than twice as much renewable-energy capacity into service this year as in 2022. Returns are holding steady, he adds. In next year’s offshore wind auction Britain will lift the maximum price from £44 per MWh to £73. Germany, too, has been raising ceiling prices for solar and wind auctions.“No one enjoys seeing prices go up, but they are accepting it,” says Mark Dooley of Macquarie. If permitting rules aren’t relaxed and protectionism goes unchecked, a lot more acceptance will be necessary. ■ More

Alaska Air agreed to buy Hawaiian Airlines for $1.9 billion in cash and debt.
The deal is subject to approval by federal regulators.
The Justice Department has taken a hard stance against mergers it views as anticompetitive.

An Alaska Airlines aircraft flies past the U.S. Capitol before landing at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., January 24, 2022.
Joshua Roberts | Reuters

Alaska Air Group’s executives spent months working on its plan to buy rival Hawaiian Airlines. The airlines’ leaders will now spend many more trying to convince regulators the acquisition should go ahead.
It could be the latest in a string of challenges brought by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department against airline deals it views as anticompetitive.

The $1.9 billion cash and debt deal, announced Sunday, comes less than a year after the Justice Department sued to block another deal: JetBlue Airways’ $3.8 billion cash acquisition of budget carrier Spirit Airlines. The Justice Department argued that the purchase of Spirit would harm consumers in the form of higher fares if the budget airline is absorbed by JetBlue. Earlier this year, the Justice Department successfully broke up JetBlue’s partnership with American Airlines in the U.S. Northeast.
In both that limited alliance and the Spirit acquisition, JetBlue argued it needed to team up to better compete with larger rivals, and grow, when planes and pilots are in short supply.
More than a decade of airline mergers left four airlines — American, Delta, Southwest and United — in control of around 80% of U.S. airline capacity. Alaska has a more than 5% share of U.S. airlines’ capacity and Hawaiian has a less than 2% share, according to Cirium data.
The Alaska-Hawaiian deal comes as Hawaiian has faced a host of challenges including like the Maui wildfires, increased competition in Hawaii from Southwest and a slower recovery of some long-haul Asia routes.

Deal differences

The Alaska-Hawaiian and JetBlue-Spirit deals are different in approach, but the Alaska acquisition could still face hurdles with regulators.

For example, JetBlue plans to remodel Spirit’s tightly packed yellow planes to take out seats and bring on board more amenities like seat-back screens, while getting rid of the Spirit brand and model entirely. Alaska, meanwhile, said it plans to keep separate Hawaiian and Alaska brands, two carriers that are key to the far-flung states they serve.
That’s different from Alaska’s 2016 acquisition of Virgin America, when it spent years getting rid of Virgin’s branding and fleet of Airbus jets in favor of a streamlined Boeing airline.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the Alaska-Hawaii deal on Monday, but some experts said they expect a challenge from regulators.
“The starting point is one of skepticism,” said William Kovacic, a professor at the George Washington School of Law and a former chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
He said the Justice Department’s review of the deal will focus on where Hawaiian and Alaska compete and “consider how the two companies might have expanded service in different ways were it not for the merger itself.”
Alaska and Hawaiian executives have defended their deal, citing little overlap and the ability to expand their reach. The carriers’ CEOs said the deal will help them expand their networks, giving Alaska access to Hawaiian’s network in the Asia-Pacific region and expanding Hawaiian’s current reach with Alaska’s network throughout the U.S., for example.
“We’re confident that this is unique from others that are pursuing combinations,” Alaska CFO Shane Tackett said in an interview with CNBC. “We have very similar product offerings and we have very limited network overlap.” He said that the two carriers have about a 3% overlap with seats and 12 routes.
In the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the JetBlue-Spirit deal, “they really lean heavily on the catalyzing role that Spirit in particular, but that Spirit and JetBlue can play in the market,” said Samuel Engel, a lecturer at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and senior vice president at consulting firm ICF. “I don’t think anyone has every argued that about Alaska and Hawaiian,” he added.
“That said, the posture of this administration has suggested there are not many mergers they would embrace,” he said.
Alaska and Hawaiian executives said they expect it to take 12 to 18 months to close the deal, a timeframe which would push it beyond next year’s presidential election and potentially into a new administration.
Hawaiian’s stock nearly tripled on Monday to $14.22 a share, though still below the proposed purchase price. Alaska’s shares lost 14.2% to end the day at $34.08. More

Alaska Airlines has agreed to acquire its rival Hawaiian Airlines in a deal valued at about $1.9 billion.
The deal must pass muster with federal regulators, who have taken a hard stance about mergers they view as anticompetitive.
The airlines said they will keep their respective brands, and the new carrier would be based in Seattle, where Alaska is headquartered.

Alaska Air Group has agreed to buy rival Hawaiian Airlines in a $1.9 billion deal, setting up another potential regulatory battle in the second proposed airline merger in less than two years.
Alaska would pay $18 a share for Hawaiian and would take on $900 million of its debt, the companies said Sunday. Shares of Hawaiian Airlines closed on Friday at $4.86, giving the company a market capitalization of about $250 million. They’re down nearly 53% this year.

The airline has struggled with challenges including the Maui wildfires, increased competition from Southwest Airlines, which has ramped up service in Hawaii in recent years, and a lagging recovery of travel to and from Asia after the pandemic. Hawaiian has posted net losses in all but one quarter since the start of 2020, while Alaska and other carriers have returned to more solid financial footing as the pandemic waned.
“What we saw here was a unique opportunity in time at the valuation that we saw Hawaiian at,” said Shane Tackett, Alaska Airlines’ CFO, in an interview. He said the deal would also enable the combined companies to become a “market leader” in the premium-travel Hawaii market.
Hawaiian’s stock nearly tripled on Monday to $14.22 a share, though still below the proposed purchase price. Alaska’s shares lost 14.2% to end the day at $34.08.

Regulatory hurdles

Carriers have faced strong opposition from President Joe Biden’s Justice Department when they have argued that they need to pair up to better compete with larger rivals. Earlier this year, the Justice Department won a lawsuit to break up a regional partnership in the Northeast between JetBlue Airways and American Airlines.
The Justice Departments also sued to block JetBlue Airways’ proposed acquisition of discount carrier Spirit Airlines. A trial is expected to wrap up in the coming days.

Four airlines — American, United, Delta and Southwest — control about 80% of the U.S. market, consolidation that resulted from years of mergers.
Hawaiian and Alaska said they expect the transaction to close in 12 to 18 months, subject to approval by regulators and Hawaiian’s shareholders.
On a call with analysts on Sunday evening, Alaska CEO Ben Minicucci expressed confidence that the deal will get approved, citing 12 overlapping markets, a combined 1,400 daily flights and a larger network that he said would allow the airline to compete with the four largest carriers.
“We are hopeful that it will be seen in a positive light,” he said.
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents cabin crews at both airlines said it would evaluate the deal.
“Our first priority is to determine whether this merger will improve conditions for Flight Attendants just like the benefits the companies have described for shareholders and consumers,” the AFA said in a statement. “Our support of the merger will depend on this.”
The combined company will be based in Seattle, where Alaska Airlines is headquartered, and be led by Minicucci.
“Given the transaction dollars we paid we feel this is strategically a step-change for us to accelerate not only our financial performance but the growth of our network,” he said said on the call.

Shift for Alaska

The two airlines said they will keep each carrier’s brand but operate under a single platform, combining into a 365-airplane fleet covering 138 destinations.
Prior to pursuing Hawaiian, Alaska Airlines acquired Virgin America for $2.6 billion in 2016.
The Hawaiian deal is a major shift for Alaska. It operates Boeing 737s and it spent years whittling down Virgin’s fleet of Airbus planes to streamline its fleet. Purchasing Hawaiian would bring a complex mix of Boeing and Airbus jets, both narrow-body and wide-body planes, under Alaska’s roof.
“The Hawaiian brand will remain an important part of our home state with Honolulu becoming a strategic hub for the combined company and expanded service for Hawaii residents,” Hawaiian CEO Peter Ingram said on the call Sunday.
The combination will allow Alaska Airlines to triple nonstop or one-stop flights from the Hawaiian islands to destinations throughout North America. It will also bring Hawaiian’s long-haul flying to and from Asia under Alaska’s umbrella. Hawaiian last year struck a deal to fly converted-cargo planes for Amazon.
“We will be closely assessing whether further dedicated freighter flying for ourselves or an asset-light model for others could make sense for the combined company over time,” CFO Tackett said on the call Sunday.
Alaska Airlines said the deal should bolster earnings within the next two years with at least $235 million of “run-rate synergies.”
WATCH: Maui tourism still not back to full strength since wildfires More

Black Friday weekend got a boost this year from more online shopping, deep discounts and cooler temperatures in many parts of the U.S.
Yet that doesn’t mean that the rest of the season will blow away expectations.
About half of holiday shoppers’ spending is done as of the end of Cyber Monday, Adobe and the National Retail Federation said.

Shoppers walk around Twelve Oaks Mall on November 24, 2023 in Novi, Michigan. 
Emily Elconin | Getty Images

Retailers are cheering after shoppers spent big on gifts and decor in the days after they gobbled up turkey and stuffing.
But the strong showing does not necessarily mean those companies will have blowout success in their all-important holiday quarter.

Online spending shot up by nearly 8% year over year to $38 billion during the five-day period from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday, according to Adobe Analytics. A record high of 200.4 million shoppers went to retailers’ stores and websites over the same period, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation. And Ulta Beauty and Foot Locker’s shares rose this week, after the companies reported better-than-expected earnings and a strong start to holiday spending on sneakers, makeup and more.
But some unique factors may have driven those early sales, including wider adoption of online shopping, deeper discounting levels and cooler temperatures in many parts of the U.S. That’s raised questions about whether consumers’ appetite to spend will continue throughout the critical retail season — or taper off into a more pronounced lull between Black Friday and the final rush before Christmas.
Ulta is in one of the hottest categories for retail, as beauty continues to defy weaker discretionary spending trends. Yet even Ulta CEO Dave Kimbell was quick to point out this week on the company’s earnings call that retail’s biggest weeks are ahead.
He said Ulta and its beauty competitors will have higher promotional levels than a year ago, as they cater to budget-minded customers.

Read more CNBC retail news

The NRF has tempered expectations, too, relative to recent years. The industry’s major trade group predicts 3% to 4% year-over-year growth in holiday-related spending from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31. That’s roughly in line with the average annual growth before the boom of the pandemic years.

On a call this week, NRF CEO Matt Shay said the season is on track to meet that estimate — even after shoppers blew past the trade group’s turnout expectations for the five-day Thanksgiving weekend.
Here’s a look at three key factors that contributed to Black Friday weekend:

Anastasiia Krivenok | Moment | Getty Images

Shoppers flock online

Instead of dashing to the mall after Thanksgiving dinner or lining up outside stores for doorbuster deals on Black Friday morning, more Americans are filling up shopping carts from their couches.
Online shopping still drives just a fraction of overall holiday spending, even after the cooped-up years of the pandemic — giving it plenty of room to grow. About 1 in 5 retail dollars are spent online, according to Adobe Analytics. Only about 30% of overall holiday sales last year took place online, through apps or in other locations that aren’t physical stores, according to the NRF.
Consumers spent $109.3 billion online from Nov. 1 through Cyber Monday this year, according to Adobe Analytics. That’s a 7.3% jump compared with the same period last year.
It’s an even sharper jump from pre-pandemic in 2019. Consumers spent $81.5 billion online during the stretch from Nov. 1 through Cyber Monday that year. The period this year had a few extra days since Thanksgiving was later in 2019 than in 2023, but illustrates the bigger embrace of e-commerce.
Adobe’s data covers more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail websites, 100 million unique items and 18 total product categories.
One reason for the shift? Some major retailers that used to draw shoppers on the evening of Thanksgiving are now shut. The closures of Walmart, Target, Best Buy and other retailers on Thanksgiving is one of the pandemic’s legacies.
Plus, in a year when Americans are more budget-minded, online can be the better way to shop, said Vivek Pandya, a lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. Comparing prices is easier to do by opening multiple web browsers and apps rather than driving from store to store, he said.
“The focus is on price and value and the consumer has been very strategic,” he said.
It’s too soon to say if the higher online shopping total so far this season means holiday shoppers will spend more overall year over year — or if more of their purchases are just moving to websites and apps. Adobe does not track in-store purchases, Pandya said.
Adobe predicts that full holiday season online spending from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 will hit $221.8 billion, which would be a nearly 5% year-over-year jump. If the estimate ends up being correct, that means shoppers still have a little more than half of their online holiday spending to go.
The NRF said this week that its survey found about half of consumers’ online and in-store holiday shopping remains.

A customer visits the store during early morning Black Friday sales at Macy’s Herald Square on November 24, 2023 in New York, New York.
Kena Betancur | Getty Images

A hunger for deals

The desire for deals is an early and clear theme of the season.
After more than a year of paying higher prices for nearly everything including milk, gas and housing, U.S. shoppers have shown that a compelling price cut is one of the best motivators.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become synonymous with deep discounts, which may explain the outsized shopper turnout and online spending.
On Cyber Monday, for instance, consumers saw discounts peak at 31% for electronics, 27% for toys, 23% on apparel and 21% on furniture, according to Adobe.
Those price cuts in electronics, apparel and furniture were higher than Cyber Monday a year ago. Toys, on the other hand, had lower discounting levels than the last Cyber Monday.
Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo, said it’s a mistake for investors to extrapolate that heightened Black Friday weekend spending means that the American consumer is healthy. Instead, he described it as the “last hurrah” before a recession that Wells Fargo predicts will take place in the first half of 2024.
He said higher credit card balances, increased costs of borrowing and the risk that the U.S. Federal Reserve may keep raising interest rates to fight inflation could spur a downturn.
“People are just about tapped out, but [with] the holiday season, people are willing to even further extend themselves,” he said.
Reality may also hit as consumers must pay off those holiday purchases.
Americans are financing purchases in new ways, along with swiping credit and debit cards. Use of buy now, pay later hit an all-time high on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe. It contributed $940 million in online spend, a nearly 43% jump year over year. Shoppers who used the payment option also put more items in their carts, as the number of items purchased rose 11% year over year.
Taking on credit card debt this holiday season will come at a steeper price, too, if consumers carry a balance from month to month because of higher interest rates.

Shoppers look at clothes during Black Friday deals at Macy’s department store at the Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City, New York, U.S., November 24, 2023. 
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters

A well-timed cold snap

In many parts of the country, shoppers got away with postponing purchases of sweaters, hats, jackets and other cold-weather gear thanks to an unseasonably warm fall.
Yet Black Friday weekend brought chillier temperatures in major cities such as New York City — the kind of cold snap that retailers root for.
Over the past two months, companies including Levi Strauss and Macy’s spoke about the challenge of milder weather.
Macy’s CEO-elect Tony Spring told investors on an earnings call in mid-November that “the weather was a little warmer than we would have liked,” but stores adapted with merchandise that could transition from season to season.
Levi CEO Chip Bergh said unseasonably warm weather hurt sales of its denim at stores such as Walmart, J.C. Penney and Macy’s.
“It’s hard to sell blue jeans when it’s 110 degrees outside,” he said on a call with CNBC in October.
Colder weather over Black Friday weekend laid the groundwork for bigger sales, said Scott Bernhardt, president at Planalytics, a predictive demand and analytics company that tracks the influence of weather on retail spending. A cold snap typically motivates spending, since it puts shoppers into a holiday mood and helps their shopping list better match the seasonal merchandise that retailers have displayed in stores, he said.
Retailers may not get as lucky in the weeks ahead, Bernhardt said. More

Pfizer’s twice-daily version of its experimental weight loss pill has now joined a long list of other scrapped obesity drugs. 
Pfizer’s move to drop two obesity drug candidates in the last year demonstrates how difficult it is to develop an effective, safe and tolerable treatment for losing weight.
Before successful weight loss treatments such as Wegovy and Ozempic, the path to treating obesity was strewn with failures dating back decades.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Pfizer’s twice-daily version of its experimental weight loss pill has now joined a long list of other scrapped drugs that aimed to treat obesity but came with unintended consequences. 
The drugmaker on Friday said it will stop developing the twice-daily treatment, danuglipron, after obese patients taking the drug lost significant weight but experienced high rates of adverse side effects in a midstage clinical trial. Pfizer noted that it will release data on a once-daily version of the pill next year, which will “inform the path forward.” 

The announcement came six months after Pfizer scrapped a different once-daily pill in June, citing elevated liver enzymes. Pfizer’s move to drop two obesity drug candidates in just a few months demonstrates how difficult it is to develop an effective, safe and tolerable treatment for losing weight, even after recent breakthrough medications entered the space. 
That includes Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic as well as Eli Lilly’s diabetes drug Mounjaro. They have all skyrocketed in popularity — and slipped into shortages — over the last year for safely and successfully causing significant weight loss. An estimated 40% of U.S. adults are obese, making those drugs the pharmaceutical industry’s newest cash cow. 
But before the current weight loss industry gold rush, the path to treating obesity was strewn with failures dating back decades.
The main reason many experimental treatments were scrapped by drugmakers, rejected by U.S. regulators or eventually pulled from the market were unintended side effects, including elevated liver enzymes, cancer risks, cardiovascular risks and serious psychiatric problems, such as suicide. 

Eisai’s lorcaserin

One of the most recent casualties among experimental obesity drugs is Japanese drugmaker Eisai’s lorcaserin, which was removed from the market in 2020 due to causing an increased risk of cancer in patients. 

The Food and Drug Administration greenlit lorcaserin in 2012 based on several clinical trials but required Eisai to conduct a larger and longer study on the drug after the approval.
That study on about 12,000 patients over five years found that more people taking lorcaserin were diagnosed with cancer compared with those taking a placebo, which led the FDA to pull the drug from the market.  
Lorcaserin, marketed under the brand name Belviq, didn’t appear to gain much traction while it was commercially available. In its full-year 2019 earnings, Eisai reported that Lorcaserin had sales of $28.1 million in the U.S. for the year. Global sales of the drug were about $42 million. Eisai’s total sales for the year were roughly $4.42 billion.

Sanofi’s rimonabant

An obesity drug called rimonabant from Sanofi and Aventis was withdrawn from all markets in 2008 due to the risk of serious psychiatric problems, including suicide. 
Notably, the treatment never won approval in the U.S. because a panel of experts to the FDA rejected the drug amid fears that it may cause suicidal thoughts. But European regulators approved rimonabant, marketed under the name Acomplia, in 2006 based on extensive clinical trials. 
Two years later, European regulators recommended the suspension of rimonabant after one of its committees determined that the risks of the treatment — particularly psychiatric issues — outweighed its benefits. 
The treatment suppressed appetite by blocking the receptor of cannabinoid substances in the brain, which plays an important role in regulating the body’s food intake and metabolism. 
Due to rimonabant’s limited time on the market and failure to win U.S. approval, the drug never reached Sanofi’s lofty projection that it would eventually generate $3 billion a year or more. 

Abbott Laboratories’ sibutramine

Several obesity drugs have also been discontinued, rejected or pulled from the market due to unintended cardiovascular risks. 
That includes sibutramine from Abbott Laboratories, which was once widely used as a treatment for obesity along with diet and exercise.
The drug was first approved in 1997, but carried warnings about high blood pressure and a risk of heart attack and stroke in cardiovascular patients. 
A large, long-term trial on nearly 10,000 adults confirmed that sibutramine was associated with a significant increase in cardiovascular events, which prompted regulators in the U.S. and Europe to pull the drug from those markets in 2010.
Sales of sibutramine had been dwindling ahead of its removal from the market. The drug raked in only $80 million globally, including $20 million from the U.S., in the first nine months of 2010.
Recent evidence suggests that the newest slate of approved weight loss drugs may have the opposite effect on heart health: Weekly injections of Wegovy slashed the overall risk of heart attack, stroke and death from cardiovascular causes by 20%, according to a recent clinical trial.  More

Panera Bread has confidentially filed to go public again, CNBC has learned
The restaurant chain has been signaling for months that it’s interested in an initial public offering.
JAB Holding took the company private in 2017 for $7.5 billion.

A Panera Bread mango yuzu citrus charged lemonade is displayed at a Panera Bread restaurant in Novato, California, on Nov. 1, 2023.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Panera Bread has confidentially filed to go public again, people familiar with the matter told CNBC.
The restaurant chain, known for its soups, sandwiches and bagels, has been signaling for months that it’s looking to go public through an initial public offering. In May, Panera announced a CEO transition and said the leadership changes were “in preparation for its eventual IPO” — amid a two-year IPO drought that ended in the fall.

Mediterranean restaurant chain Cava, whose chair is Panera founder Ron Shaich, was among the trickle of companies that went public this year. Investors had mixed reactions to the slate of offerings.
Panera isn’t alone in hoping market conditions improve in 2024. Chinese-founded fast-fashion giant Shein confidentially filed to go public Monday, and Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Reddit and Skims could also be in next year’s IPO class.
Panera declined to comment to CNBC. The news was first reported by the Financial Times.
The company was last publicly traded in 2017. JAB Holding, the investment arm of the Reimann family, bought the company for $7.5 billion. It added Panera to a portfolio that, at that time, included Keurig and Krispy Kreme.
In recent years, however, JAB has been reworking its portfolio. In 2021, it sold Au Bon Pain to a Yum Brands franchisee and took Krispy Kreme public.

JAB also tried to take Panera public again that year. But in 2022, Panera called off its deal with Danny Meyer’s special purpose acquisition company. The unusual arrangement would have exchanged shares of USHG Acquisition for the sandwich chain’s stock and allowed the company to survive a merger with Panera’s subsidiary Rye Merger.
However, Panera scrapped those plans, citing market conditions.
But the chain’s current attempt to go public comes as the restaurant has drawn scrutiny for other reasons. The company was recently sued for its “charged lemonade.” The plaintiffs allege the drink caused the death of their college-age daughter, who had a heart condition.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global shares jumped Friday.
Apple and Paramount are discussing bundling their streaming services, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Warner Bros. Discovery has been open to bundling its Max service with rivals.

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Media stocks jumped Friday following a Wall Street Journal report that Apple and Paramount Global are in early-stage talks to offer a bundle of the two company’s streaming platforms.
The companies have talked about bundling Apple TV+ and Paramount+ in an offering that would cost less than subscribing to the two separately, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Shares of Paramount closed up nearly 10% Friday, while Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns streaming service Max, closed up more than 8%. Paramount is down about 6% on the year, while Warner Bros. Discovery, which reported a streaming profit in the third quarter, is up about 19%.
Apple and Paramount did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Paramount+ and Apple TV+ could be an ideal match for a bundle given their differing content strategies. Apple TV+ is known to offer a robust library of exclusive and prestige content, while Paramount+ boasts a larger back-catalog of recognizable TV shows and movies.
The report comes as talk heats up in the media industry about bundling rival streaming services together.
Streaming leader Netflix and Max entered into an agreement with Verizon to bundle the two services at a reported $10 a month, less than the $17 the combination would normally cost, the Journal previously reported. Liberty Media Chairman and Warner Bros. Discovery board member John Malone has often discussed what streaming bundles could look like. Disney currently offers a bundle of Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+.

The trend has extended beyond streaming. Following a dispute earlier this year, Disney and Charter entered into an agreement where some Spectrum customers would gain access to the ad-supported Disney+ plan, a move some experts predict could become more common.
An Apple partnership could be a strong opportunity to help Paramount pivot in the rapidly changing media environment. Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone has been open to making big deals, CNBC has reported, as the company suffers from declining revenue and streaming losses.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More