R&D costs climbed by nearly $200 million versus five years ago (when their sales were higher than they are today). That increase is equivalent to ten percent of their sales now. By itself, that expense gain is nearly enough to wipe out their old decent profit numbers.

"Other" SG&A expenses climbed by nearly $200 million as well.

They added around 1,700 to 2,000 employees since the beginning of 2013. Going from ~7,300 to 9,000+. That's probably more than a $200 million total annual cost addition. Then contract sales by $400 or $500 million from those days, and you get a big net financial crush.

Simply put, they bet on growth showing up, which has never materialized. To put it into context, their sales for fiscal 2007 were $1.84 billion (versus $1.95 billion the last four quarters; so realistically zero growth for a decade (!)).

To throw some more onto the fire, they spent over a billion dollars buying back stock over the last 10-12 years or so ($447 million in 2006 alone). As with companies like IBM, that money obviously should have gone to improving the actual business rather than financial maneuvers (trying to fake EPS growth).

Worse yet, as of recently they were still at the faking EPS game (from a year ago):

"Autodesk, Inc. today announced a program to repurchase up to 30 million shares of the company's common stock"

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160919005222/en/Auto...

So here's a company, bleeding red ink, whose balance sheet is badly eroding, sales are falling, and the people running the business are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy back massively over-inflated shares.

IMHO their product is nowadays REVIT (3DMax has fierce competition and is a lost battle). REVIT is a product that is still evolving and as such harder to copy/compete.