MENLO PARK -- Facebook's beleaguered stock received a serious jolt Wednesday from the social network's second earnings report as a public company, sending shares toward their biggest one-day gain since the company's record-setting initial public offering.

Facebook stock increased as much as 24.4 percent in Wednesday's morning session, with shares selling for more than $24 for the first time since July. At the end of the morning session, at 9 a.m. Pacific time, Facebook shares were trading for $23.42, a gain of $3.92, or 20.1 percent.

The jump followed Facebook's earnings report, released after Tuesday's trading session, that showed the Menlo Park company making advances in mobile monetization, a development investors have been looking for since well before Facebook went public.

The report showed about $150 million, or 14 percent, of Facebook's $1.09 billion advertising revenue came from ads shown on smartphones and tablets, substantial growth from a company that was showing no revenue from mobile advertising a year ago. Advertising revenue in total increased 36 percent from a year ago, another positive sign for the company after Google (GOOG)

reported a downward trend in costs per click -- a major online advertising metric -- last week.

"They're essentially growing from nothing, so it's a very good start," R.W. Baird financial analyst Colin Sebastian said Tuesday, referring to Facebook's mobile ad business. "It's early days. There needs to be a lot more progress, but this is a positive sign."

Stock analysts agreed Wednesday morning, with Citi analyst Mark Mahaney, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan, and Bank of America analysts increasing their rating of the stock to a "Buy."

"Two of the biggest Facebook risks (Zynga dependency and mobile monetization) appear to have been downsized," Mahaney wrote, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Facebook's gaming partner, San Francisco-based Zynga, also gained Wednesday morning on Wall Street after announcing layoffs of 5 percent of its workforce Tuesday; the company announces earnings after the bell Wednesday.

Other Silicon Valley companies that announced earnings on Tuesday, the busiest day yet for the region in this earnings season, showed mixed results on Wall Street the next day.

The biggest loser was Netflix (NFLX), which fell as much as 15.9 percent by 9 a.m., when shares were trading for $58.21, a loss of $10.01, or 14.7 percent. The Los Gatos video-on-demand service announced earnings that eclipsed forecasts Tuesday, but had to trim its full-year forecast for subscriber growth in its streaming-video business, disappointing investors and analysts.

"Streaming growth is slowing to a crawl, while their DVD business is generating 90 percent of all profit -- and that's declining super fast," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter told Bloomberg News.

Foster City biotech company Gilead jumped 6 percent in morning trading after an earnings report that easily beat expectations, thanks to the strength of its HIV/AIDS drugs, but Sunnyvale networking company Juniper declined 8 percent after providing a fourth-quarter forecast that did no live up to expectations. VMware shares were virtually unchanged after the company met analyst forecasts and hired a new CFO, but provided a fourth-quarter forecast at the low end of expectations.

The varied responses were basically a wash, as the tech-heavy Nasdaq showed a slight loss at the midway point of Wednesday's session, moving down 0.3 percent to 2,982.99.

Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/mercbizbreak.