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Wall Street is weighing in after Boeing announced another delay in bringing the grounded 737 MAX jet back into service. Another analyst downgraded the stock on Wednesday.

“It could get worse before it gets better,” wrote Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard in a Wednesday research report. “The ramifications of this [delay] have yet to reverberate—from a Boeing perspective, this means over a year without deliveries of its most profitable product line, while customer compensation costs are likely to be higher than previously thought.”

Stallard also worries about the impact an extended production delay will have on the Boeing supply chain. Boeing, according to Stallard, could have trouble restarting production when the plane is cleared to fly. Boeing stopped building the MAX this month as its inventory of completed but undelivered planes accumulated over the past 10 months.

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Stallard cut his rating on Boeing stock (ticker: BA) from the equivalent of Buy to Hold. His price target for shares dropped from $388 to $294.

Baird analyst Peter Arment sees the production halt lasting into the second quarter. “Boeing needs to address the nearly 450 aircraft that are currently in storage,” Arment wrote in a Tuesday research report. He thinks the inventory overhang—delivering parked planes to airline customers—will last into 2021.

Boeing didn’t respond to questions about when production of the MAX might resume.

Arment already rates shares Hold, having cut his rating from the equivalent of Buy back in October. Stallard is just the latest analyst to throw in the towel.

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More than 80% of analysts covering the company rated shares the equivalent of Buy before the second MAX crash last March, involving an Ethiopian Airlines flight. Now, only about 35% of analysts covering the company rate shares the equivalent of Buy. The average analyst buy-rating ratio for stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, for comparison, is about 55%.

J.P. Morgan analyst Seth Seifman does rate the stock the equivalent of Buy. The newest delay isn’t a “complete surprise,” he said, because the Federal Aviation Administration is likely to require more pilot training. He also sees Boeing helping out its supplier base through the production shutdown. “We expect Boeing to make some kind of payment to [Spirit AeroSystems] that would, at a minimum, go toward supporting Spirit’s suppliers,” Seifman wrote in a Wednesday research report.

Spirit AeroSystems (SPR) generates more than 80% of its sales from Boeing.

The 737 MAX, Boeing’s newest model single-aisle jet, has been grounded worldwide since mid-March 2019 following two deadly crashes within five months. Boeing has been working with global aviation regulators on fixes to make the plane safer.

It looks as if the troubled jet won’t return to the skies until summer 2020, at the earliest.

Boeing shares dropped 1.4% to $309 Wednesday, while the S&P 500 closed up 0.03%. The stock is down more than 26% since the second fatal MAX crash.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com