The present research aimed to evaluate the economic and financial situation of Brazilian open capital companies between 2011 and 2018. Therefore, an artificial neural network (ANN) backpropagation algorithm was estimated, as well as a discriminant function, using a sample of 285 Brazilian companies with open capitals. As main results, the ANN algorithm was identified as the best method of this evaluation, which relates the company's situation with its most recent past, which proved to be more efficient in companies classification with profitable or loss situation, presenting 83,8% of assertiveness. Moreover, it was possible to identify that the discriminant analysis method did not present statistical significance in the evaluation of these companies. Finally, the important variables in the classification were general liquidity, net margin, debt composition, return on investment, turnover of the asset, physical production index.