Shares of pet health insurer Trupanion Inc., the newest member of the New York Stock Exchange, rose by up to 15 percent Friday in early first-day trading. The Seattle company raised about $71 million when it sold 7,125,000 shares of common stock at an initial public offering price of $10. The price was down from the anticipated range of $13 to $15 a share. Trupanion, which trades under the stock symbol TRUP, plans to use the cash infusion to pay down debt and ramp up its marketing. “Trupanion is working really hard to make sure that we build and invest in technology and in business processes where we do the work for veterinarians rather than make the veterinarian bend their medicine to insurance,” said chief veterinary officer Kerri Marshall, DVM. “We are becoming a public company to continue this work to help veterinarians and their clients do what they do best: care for pets. “We believe the Trupanion model will help lead to pet health insurance becoming the norm, and veterinarians will really see a huge shift in their ability to do quality veterinary medicine,” Dr. Marshall added. The company reported having 181,634 enrolled cats and dogs as of March 31 in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, nearly six times the number of policies in effect at the beginning of 2010. Despite a significant jump in enrollment and revenue, Trupanion has lost millions of dollars the past three years.
