A Beepers Of California

Southland Communications, a Santa Ana paging company, said Monday that it has signed a letter of intent to acquire a Torrance company in a $12.5-million transaction. Southland, a publicly traded company that does business in Orange County as National Paging Co., has agreed to purchase A+ Beepers of California for $9.5 million in cash and notes. Southland also would assume $3 million of A+ Beepers debt, according to Ahmad Bayaa, Southland president.

If anything, Southland Communications Inc. is persistent. On Monday, the financially strapped paging service in Santa Ana, which is tangled in legal troubles with securities regulators, announced for the second time that it has signed an agreement to merge with A+ Beepers of California Inc. in Torrance. Southland, which does business as National Paging, first broached the idea of a merger with A+ Beepers in October, 1989.

The Securities and Exchange Commission says it now knows why the stock of Santa Ana-based Southland Communication Inc. nearly doubled in price a few weeks ago despite the company's dreadful performance: a massive stock market manipulation scheme by the firm's president. The SEC filed a civil lawsuit Monday in federal court in Manhattan, accusing Southland Communication President and Chief Executive Ahmad N.

Trading in Southland Communications' stock, which was suspended Wednesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission, became volatile after March 2 when a critical, unsigned research report about the firm was circulated on Wall Street, brokers said Thursday. The report recommended that brokers sell the stock short, or speculate that the price would go down because of the Santa Ana-based company's weak financial state.

Southland Communications Inc. isn't listed in the phone book. The small firm, which does business as National Paging Co., has about 70 employees and an unassuming, single-story headquarters on Village Way in Santa Ana. Plagued by working capital deficits and net losses for the past five years, publicly held Southland is hardly the kind of company that catches the eye of the press or big Wall Street investors.

Southland Communications Inc. isn't listed in the phone book. Doing business as National Paging Co., it has about 70 employees and an unassuming headquarters in Santa Ana. After five years of losses and working-capital deficits, Southland is hardly the kind of company that catches the eye of the press or big Wall Street investors. It was, however, the kind of company that drew a network of short sellers, who this spring speculated that Southland's stock price would collapse.