The WA1 Resources Ltd (ASX: WA1) share price is scaling new heights yet again on Monday.
At the time of writing, the ASX All Ords stock is up 5% to a new record high of $17.68.
This means that its shares are now up a remarkable 7,200% since February 2022.
To put that into context, if you had invested $10,000 into this ASX All Ords stock back in 2022, your investment would now be worth a cool $720,000.
Why has this ASX All Ords stock delivered stunning returns?
Firstly, it is worth noting that while WA1 Resources may now be a billion-dollar company, that certainly wasn't the case in February 2022.
At that point, the company was essentially a high-risk penny stock. As a result, putting $10,000 of your hard-earned money into its shares would have been incredibly brave.
After all, more often than not, putting money into penny stocks leads to big losses. But thankfully for WA1 Resources investors, this has proven to be the very opposite.
But why?
Investors have been bidding this ASX All Ords stock higher due to excitement over its 100% owned West Arunta Project in Western Australia.
Drilling last year revealed a significant high-grade blanket of niobium mineralisation between the western and eastern zones at the project.
This has since been followed up with further drilling results showing that high-grade intercepts are continuing.
Overall, this bodes very well for the company because niobium demand is expected to increase materially in the future.
What is niobium?
The company notes that niobium is a critical metal with unique properties that make it essential as the world transitions to a low-carbon economy.
The primary niobium product is Ferroniobium (FeNb, ~65% Nb), which accounted for 105,000 tonnes of sales in 2022. This represents approximately 90% of niobium product sales.
Ferroniobium is primarily used as a micro alloy in the steel industry to improve the mechanical properties of steel.
But there's also niobium pentoxide (Nb2O5), which the company highlights as a key growth market.
Management notes that there have been significant recent developments in lithium-ion battery technology. Developers are utilising niobium to substantially reduce charge times down to six minutes while enhancing battery life to up to 20,000 charge cycles. The latter represents an increase of up to 10x compared to existing technologies.
This could make niobium an important part of the battery materials chain in the future.
