Outsized profits does not necessarily mean it flows through to shareholders. That's a management choice. You can be very profitable and not buy back stock or issue dividends.
I am fairly confident the cohort of those who support investor owned utilities are a vocal minority.
Note that there exists the same incentives for publicly owned and investor owned utilities of voters today wanting lower utility prices at the expense of future utility customers by keeping capital expenses down today.
>I am fairly confident the cohort of those who support investor owned utilities are a vocal minority.
I will be the first to support only publicly owned utilities. But that has nothing to do with using bad logic and numbers to determine outsized margins.