I think so.
Basically at cycle rollover, your New Running Total (going into the next cycle) consists of all the merits you earned in the last cycle, plus a serially halved proportion of the previous three (or is it four?) cycles before that. The rank you have at the start of the next cycle seems to be based on your Old Running Total of merits you achieved at the end of the last cycle, before rollover and therefore before decay.
Benefits is another issue, though. I would have expected the service benefits to be granted at the start of the next cycle along with your rank if your Old Running Total broke through the required ranking target before cycle rollover (at which point merit decay would take hold), i.e. the New Running Total need not necessarily be above the required ranking target to start off with. As long as the final Running Total at the end of the current cycle does break through the ranking target again, then you get paid the salary for that target.
But what if you don't make the target? I suspect that you would get paid the salary of the rank below once the present cycle ends, then after rollover your ranking would go down to that appropriate level, together with the privileges and restrictions of that rank, for the next cycle, and the merit decay and subsequent process of reaching a target begins anew.
