diff --git a/setup.cfg b/setup.cfg
index a9c6fb5b..974f8198 100644
--- a/setup.cfg
+++ b/setup.cfg
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ install_requires =
     pydantic<2.0
     cloudpickle
     scipy
-    xgboost
+    xgboost<2.0.0
     geomloss
     pgmpy
     redis
diff --git a/src/synthcity/plugins/core/dataloader.py b/src/synthcity/plugins/core/dataloader.py
index 40bee0a8..c01cede7 100644
--- a/src/synthcity/plugins/core/dataloader.py
+++ b/src/synthcity/plugins/core/dataloader.py
@@ -932,7 +932,7 @@ def unpack(self, as_numpy: bool = False, pad: bool = False) -> Any:
             longest_observation_seq = max([len(seq) for seq in temporal_data])
             return (
                 np.asarray(static_data),
-                np.asarray(pd.concat(temporal_data)),
+                np.asarray(temporal_data),
                 # masked array to handle variable length sequences
                 ma.vstack(
                     [
diff --git a/src/synthcity/version.py b/src/synthcity/version.py
index 07aec94b..d89f15a8 100644
--- a/src/synthcity/version.py
+++ b/src/synthcity/version.py
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-__version__ = "0.2.8"
+__version__ = "0.2.9"
 
 MAJOR_VERSION = ".".join(__version__.split(".")[:-1])
 PATCH_VERSION = __version__.split(".")[-1]