SLB's third-quarter 2026 earnings call described two distinct growth engines running at once: a recovery in Middle East oilfield activity, and data center-related demand that rose 76% year over year. For a company whose business has traditionally lived and died with oil and gas drilling budgets, the data center line is a newer and faster-growing addition.
The mechanism behind the data center growth isn't fully spelled out in the call, but SLB's equipment and services increasingly support power generation and cooling infrastructure that AI data centers need, adjacent to its core oilfield work. That gives the company exposure to the AI buildout without the earnings swings that have hit some of the direct AI hardware makers.
A separate Seeking Alpha analysis of the results called the quarter 'broad growth' and said it keeps a bullish thesis on the stock intact, pointing to both revenue lines holding up together rather than one offsetting weakness in the other.
What's unresolved is how durable the 76% data center growth rate is once the comparison base gets harder next year, and whether Middle East activity keeps recovering if oil prices stay under pressure.