Two health-tech companies that went public Thursday showed there’s still a willing audience for tech-related initial public offerings, as both enjoyed a price pop on their debuts.

Livongo Health Inc., a Silicon Valley-based digital health company that offers smart, connected devices for personalized digital guidance, went public on the Nasdaq exchange at $28 per share and rapidly surged thereafter. Peaking at $44.96, a 60% rise, the company closed the day at $38.10, up 36% on the day.

Founded in 2014, Livongo had raised $235 million in venture capital funding. The company primarily provides diabetes services to large employers, a market that according to CNBC is attracting big dollars “in the quest to ultimately provide better coverage and bring down costs.”

The second company to go public Thursday, Salt Lake City-based Health Catalyst Inc., also debuted on the Nasdaq to a willing audience. The company went public at $26 per share and surged as high as $39.69 before closing the day at $39.17, up 51% on its first day of trading.

Founded in 2008, making it a well-seasoned startup prior, Health Catalyst is a provider of data and analytics technology and services to healthcare organizations. Unifying data from different systems, the company’s cloud-based health-tech offering spans across clinical operations, financial aspects and analytics for all types of healthcare providers.

Health-tech companies have been on a run this month. Phressia Inc. went public July 18 with a 40% bounce on its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Phressia, Livongo and Health Catalyst are only the start of health-related IPOs this year with genealogy and DNA testing provider Ancestry.com Inc. and SmileDirectClub, a provider of “teledentistry,” both reported to be going public later this year.

The companies join a growing list of companies going public in 2019, so much so that the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report found that the second quarter hit a new record for venture capital-backed startup exits thanks to IPOs.

Most IPOs have found a willing audience this year, with some exceptions — in particular Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc., the two largest ride-hailing companies in the U.S., which have seen their share prices sag.

Photo: Livongo