Schlumberger (SLB), the world's largest oilfield services company in terms of market cap, has recently released its quarterly results that were largely good. Although the Houston, Texas based company has given a positive outlook for the remainder of the year, I believe investors should stay cautious.

Quick recap

Schlumberger released its second quarter results on Friday. The company reported revenues of $7.46 billion, better than analysts' consensus estimate of $7.68 billion, while its adjusted profits rose to $0.35 per share, beating the consensus by $0.05 per share. This was a high-quality earnings beat considering that its pretax operating profit margin also improved to 12.7%. The company generated $858 million of cash flow from operations which translated into $97 million of free cash flows, as opposed to 2Q16 last year when cash flows were million $1.63 billion and free cash flows were $885 million.

Schlumberger posted the strongest growth in North America where revenues climbed by double-digits on a sequential and year-over-year basis to $2.2 billion as the company quickly deployed idled capacity in order to benefit from the uptake in drilling activity. US land revenue surged 42% on a sequential basis, easily outpacing the 23% growth in the US land rig count for the corresponding period. In the international markets, however, total revenues climbed 4% sequentially but fell 4% on a year-over-year basis to $5.14 billion.