Before markets open Tuesday, oilfield services company Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) is scheduled to post second-quarter results. In some respects the company’s performance matters less than the status of its $35 billion acquisition by Halliburton, which continues to wend its way toward completion.

Baker Hughes is tagged by analysts to report a net loss of $0.13 per share on revenues of $3.78 billion. In the same quarter a year ago, the company reported earnings per share of $0.92 on revenues of $5.94 billion. In the first quarter of this year, analysts expected earnings per share of $0.46 and were surprised by a net loss of $0.07 per share.

Halliburton posted a surprise earnings beat Monday morning, and that caused investors to put a little charge into Baker Hughes stock, which was trading up more than 2% in the afternoon. The merger between the two is expected to be completed late this year, and until then Baker Hughes just has to show up for work every day.

One question we’d like to have answered is whether Halliburton will continue to produce the current weekly rig count report that Baker Hughes has been producing since the 1940s. The issue is likely to be less about cost and more about whether Halliburton wants to provide any information to anyone if it isn’t required to do so.

Baker Hughes shares traded up 2.2% Monday afternoon, at $59.56 in a 52-week range of $58.88 to $60.28.

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