Critical Reasoning (CR) | Re: Profits pay for a company’s R&D, which is the company’s primary source

Option D says that a company can cut its R&D budget and still maintain its market positing provided X
This X here is: Keeping its R&D budget higher than that of this competition
Note that this X is not mentioned anywhere in the passage.
X can very well be:
1.Acquiring the competition
2.Consolidating operations
3.Getting cash from other sources such as banks
The above-mentioned reasons may not be make real business sense but the point here is the strategy/condition mentioned in Option
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