Baker Hughes BKR US is best known for its weekly rig count data and as an oilfield services company, one of the “big three” US names, alongside SLB and Halliburton. It could be time to think about the business in a different way.

Baker Hughes has two major divisions: Oilfield Services & Equipment, a traditional drilling, completions and production business, and Industrial & Energy Technology (IET), which makes gas turbines, compressors, generators and grid equipment. It’s this area that is pivoting toward powering data centres, which has investors excited right now.

The company doesn’t build data centres itself, instead it makes the gas turbines, generators, synchronous condensers and grid-stability kit that powers them,…